Happy Friday! Today I am featuring another 2026 Christy Award nominee in the mystery/suspense/thriller category — The Accused by Cara Putman. The Accused is a good choice if you like courtroom drama. The author is an attorney and law school professor, and her two main characters have those careers in common. It’s another twisty mystery in the Secrets to Keep series.
Here’s the first line:
Margeaux Robbins sprinted from her parked Sonata toward the Loudoun County Courthouse, miles from her comfortable office on the Monroe College campus in Kedgewick, Virginia.
When a popular college student is murdered, her international roommate, Anneliese, becomes a prime suspect. But law professor Margeaux Robbins doesn’t believe that the quiet, lonely German girl in her class is the killer.
Chase Crandall is a burned-out defense attorney ready to extricate himself from the grind of criminal law. After he loses a client to tragedy, he’s ready for an in-house corporate position.
When Chase is assigned to Anneliese’s case, Margeaux is horrified. She doesn’t want him to provide legal counsel—not after what happened to his past client. And not with the evidence incriminating Anneliese.
Despite their mutual misgivings, the lawyer and professor pair up to find the killer and prove Anneliese’s innocence. Will they be able to untangle the mystery—and navigate their growing interest in one another—before the wrong person is charged with murder?
In addition to writing, Cara Putman is a mom of four, an attorney, a Clinical Associate Professor at a Big Ten university who also runs a center, and an all-around crazy woman. Crazy about God, her husband, and her kids. She graduated with honors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Go Huskers!), George Mason Law School, and Purdue University’s MBA program. You can learn more about her books on her website, which is easy to find because it’s simply her name dot com.
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