When attorney and best-selling author Pamela Samuels Young isn’t practicing law, you can usually find her penning her next legal thriller.

Pamela’s fast-paced novels, Every Reasonable Doubt and In Firm Pursuit, have been described as “John Grisham with a sister’s twist!” Both books, published by Harlequin’s Kimani Press imprint, are Essence magazine bestsellers. In Firm Pursuit was honored by Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine as a nominee for Best African-American Novel of 2007. Urban Reviews.com also honored In Firm Pursuit as one of the “Best of the Best” for 2007. Her debut novel, Every Reasonable Doubt, was the first place winner in the Black Expressions Book Club’s Fiction Writing Contest. Murder on the Down Low, Pamela’s third novel, goes on sale September 1, 2008. Her short story Setup is featured in the Sisters in Crime Anthology, LAndmarked for Murder.

A desire to see engaging female and African-American attorneys depicted in today’s mainstream legal fiction motivated Pamela to start writing despite a busy legal career. Pamela is an in-house employment attorney for a large corporation in Southern California, an adjunct professor at the University of Redlands’ School of Business and the legal columnist for Global Woman magazine. She still finds time to serve on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Pamela earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and her master’s degree in broadcasting from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. After spending several years as a television news writer and associate producer, including stints at WXYZ-TV in Detroit and KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, Pamela took a break from the news business to serve as a Coro Foundation Fellow in St. Louis, Missouri. Pamela later returned to school and earned her law degree at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. She practiced law at the Los Angeles office of O’Melveny & Meyers for several years and served as Employment Law Counsel for Raytheon Company.