Book excerpt: Judge Avery Lassiter is back—this time engulfed in a story of death, debt, and deception in Dallas. First, a wealthy Texas hedge fund manager, Cade Graham, is suspected of insurance fraud and mysteriously goes missing in Mexico. He is believed to have faked his own death. Meanwhile, a brilliant young inventor in the infectious disease space, Dmitry Basayev, who received funding from Cade Graham, is suspected of a massive Ponzi scheme—being litigated in Judge Lassiter’s court—and likewise goes missing. Are their disappearances connected, and how are they linked to the man who tried to kill Judge Avery Lassiter and other judges and lawyers three years ago? And who will find them first—Max Lassiter or the Mexican crime cartels that they have double-crossed? “The triple D’s—deceit, death, and double-cross—make for an engrossing read in Hedging Death, an exciting legal thriller written by Stacey Jernigan. . . . Legal thrillers are a dime a dozen. Some are mired down by too much legal-speak while others are weighed down by complicated narrative and characters that don’t engage much in the way of reader interest. Thankfully, Stacey Jernigan has given her readers an intelligent thriller.” —Readers’ Choice “This is a fast-paced legal thriller. . . Full of courtroom drama, surprises and an explosive ending, the new work is a dandy. . . Readers will learn much about the goings-on in a trial court and in the chambers. . . The novel is crisply written and just in time for a summer reading. . . Hedging Death is Judge Jernigan’s second work. It is not unusual for one’s second book to become an author’s claim to fame (consider Harper Lee or John Grisham). One can hope the same for this interesting legal novel.” —ABI Journal