When was John Grisham's first novel published?

Grisham’s first novel, “A Time to Kill,” was written when he was still working as a small-town lawyer. He spent three years on it and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.

The day after Grisham completed "A Time to Kill" he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to "The Firm" to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, "The Firm" became the bestselling novel of 1991. Since first publishing "A Time to Kill" in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year

The successes of "The Pelican Brief" which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and "The Clien", which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham’s reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham’s success even renewed interest in "A Time to Kill", which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.