Past Tense

Published together for the first time, and including a brand-new adventure, the complete Jack Reacher short story collection

Jack ‘No Middle Name’ Reacher, lone wolf, knight errant, ex-military cop, lover of women, scourge of the wicked and righter of wrongs, is the most iconic hero of our age.

A new Reacher novella, , is included, as are those previously only published as individual ebooks: , , , and ; and so is every Reacher short story that Child has written so far. Read together, they shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world.

A Jack Reacher Novel – #22

A bad day. For someone.

Jack Reacher takes an aimless stroll past a pawn shop in a small Midwestern town. In the window he sees a West Point class ring from 2005. It’s tiny. It’s a woman cadet’s graduation present to herself. Why would she give it up? Reacher’s a West Pointer too, and he knows what she went through to get it.

Reacher tracks the ring back to its owner, step by step, down a criminal trail leading west. Like Big Foot come out of the forest, he arrives in the deserted wilds of Wyoming. All he wants is to find the woman. If she’s OK, he’ll walk away. If she’s not … he’ll stop at nothing.

He’s still shaken by the recent horrors of , and now sees him set on a raw and elemental quest for simple justice.

Best advice: don’t get in his way.

**** Jack Reacher is back! The “utterly addictive” ( *The New York Times* ) series continues as acclaimed author Lee Child teams up with his brother, Andrew Child, fellow thriller writer extraordinaire. As always, Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. One morning he ends up in a town near Pleasantville, Tennessee. But there’s nothing pleasant about the place. In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one” . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution. The man he saves is Rusty Rutherford, an unassuming IT manager, recently fired after a cyberattack locked up the town’s data, records, information . . . and secrets. Rutherford wants to stay put, look innocent, and clear his name. Reacher is intrigued. There’s more to the story. The bad guys who jumped Rutherford are part of something serious and deadly, involving a conspiracy, a cover-up, and murder—all centered on a mousy little guy in a coffee-stained shirt who has no idea what he’s up against. Rule one: if you don’t know the trouble you’re in, keep Reacher by your side.

**In the next highly anticipated installment of Lee Child's acclaimed suspense series, Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an elderly couple . . . and confronts his most dangerous opponents yet.** **"Jack Reacher is today's James Bond, a thriller hero we can't get enough of."—Ken Follett** "This is a random universe," Reacher says. "Once in a blue moon things turn out just right." This isn't one of those times. Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right. An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal...