Jack Reacher books in order

Introducing Jack Reacher: How to read the Lee Child book series.

The Jack Reacher Books In Order: The Ultimate Guide.

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Jack Reacher is a series of 26 action and suspense books, created by the English author Lee Child. This saga has been made into a movie and the new Amazon Prime TV series has recently become a hit. This action-packed thriller series unravels tightly wound plots combining crime, suspense, and contemporary issues. Each thriller has its own unique protagonist: an independent man who protects the weak and avenges the wronged. Jack Reacher’s books aren’t published chronologically. You don’t need to start reading them in any specific order Anyway, maybe you want to step ahead and be guided through this series, like a sense of direction or just a firmer idea of where to read next.

Who is Jack Reacher? Everything You Need To Know.

Jack Reacher was written by Lee Child. There have been countless books written on the subject since 1997. Jack Reacher was a former Major in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps. He mostly follows him as he travels through different states, helping people and falling into webs of complications and mysteries along the way. As a former military policeman, Jack Reachers is now a defiantly independent civilian. He lives off the grid – but trouble always seems to find him. Lee Child uncovers tightly woven plots that combine crime, intrigue, and current events. A thriller is at its core a story about a man who is self-reliant, an avenger of the wrongs done to others, and a protector of the weak.

Tip: If you want to watch all seasons of the Jack Reacher TV series, you can get the FREE TRIAL of Amazon Prime Video by clicking here

Who is Lee Child? The Author Behind Jack Reacher.

Lee Child is one the world’s leading thriller authors, who has written several million copies of his books around the world. He was born in Coventry and grew up in Birmingham, England, before moving to New York. He has received many awards, including Author of the Year at last year’s British Book Awards. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2019 Queen’s birthday honours list.

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series in order: How to read the books:


There are three ways you can read Jack Reacher‘s series: The first is the simplest way to get started. You simply take the books you want because they are not published in a specific order. The second is to use the publication dates order. The third is the chrono­logical story order – you can find it at the end of this post


1 – Killing Floor – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A former military police officer named Jack Reacher is just driving through Margrave, Georgia when he gets pulled over by the local police. All Reacher knows for sure is that he is innocent. But he has no way of proving his innocence.


2 – Die Trying – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Jack Reacher witnesses someone being kidnapped off a Chicago street. He was kidnapped with her at the wrong place at the right time. He’s at the mercy of a bunch of men who demand an impossible ransom and he has to save them both or die trying.


3 – Tripwire – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Jack Reacher is staying in Key West when a man shows up looking for him. After the man dies, he has a lot of questions. The answers lead him to New York, where he meets an alluring woman. He finds himself in dangerous corners of his own history.


4 – Running Blind – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A serial killer has been killing women across the country, leaving no clues to his apparent motives. Each woman knew Jack Reacher – but none of them could see him.


5 – Echo Burning – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher hitchhikes across Texas and gets picked up in the middle of nowhere by Carmen, a mother who has a young daughter trapped in an abusive marriage, and takes her back to her house. After some deliberation, Reacher agrees to help Carmen but things don’ t go as planned when she is being arrested for the murders of her husband. Reacher finds himself trying to uncover the truth.


6 – Without Fail – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A senior member of the US Secret Service wants Reacher to find any weaknesses in their security systems. A group of desperate people already has the vice president under their control. It will use any means necessary to achieve its objective. Reacher met Mary Ellen at the casino in Atlantic City. She asked him if he could kill the vice president. He accepts and enforces an old colleague, Frances Neegle, to help carry out his mission.


7 – Persuader – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Jack Reacher lives in the present. Without a home. Without commitment. And with a burning need to correct his own mistakes – and rewrite his painful past. This book introduces Quinn. A man responsible for the murders of two of his colleagues ten years ago and who should be dead, he sees him. Reacher teams up again with the DEA to penetrate another smuggling ring in order to take down Quinn.


8 – The Enemy – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

On January 1st, 1990, A two-star general was found dead in a North Carolina motel room. He has lost his briefcase. It’s not known what was in it. Within minutes, Reacher has his orders. Control the situation. Within hours, the general’s first wife is murdered. After that, the dominoes really begin to fall.


9 – One Shot – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Six shots. Five people died. One Midwest city thrown into a state panic. Within hours the police have it solved: a clear-cut case. One exception. The accused man says “You’ve got the wrong guy.” Then he says “Get Reacher for me.”


10 – The Hard Way: Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

On the trail of a vicious kidnapping gang, Reacher learns the shocking secrets of his employer, Ed Lane, and of a horrible drama in the heart of an ugly little war. He also knows that he‘s already in way too far to turn back now. If he has to do it by himself, he will.


11 – Bad Luck and Trouble – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A woman who used to be in his old unit has found him using a signal only the elite team would know. She tells him about her brother’s brutal murder. They soon realize that two other comrades have disappeared. If someone targets Jack Reacher or his team, they’d better be prepared for what comes right back.


12 – Nothing to Lose – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher travels from the town of Hope to the neighboring town of despair and discovers that he is an unwanted guest. He decides to investigate the reason for the town’s hostility towards outsiders. Between a town and its owner, between Reacher and the people he cares about, something has to give, and it usually does. And Reacher never backs down.


13 – Gone Tomorrow – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Susan Mark, the 5th passenger, had a big surprise, and her plain little world was being watched in Washington and California and Afghanistan – by dozens of people with something in common: they were all lying to Reacher Not too much. A lot. Or at least enough to get him killed by someone else. A race has begun in the streets of Manhattan, where violent, skilled soldiers on both sides of a shadow war are fighting for control.


14 – 61 Hours – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A bus crashes in the middle of a snowy winter storm and lands Jack Reacher near Bolton, South Dakota, a town where one woman stands up for justice. An expert assassin has just arrived and the next 60 hours will change everything.


15 – Worth Dying For – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A drunk doctor refuses to help a woman who has been abused by her husband. Reacher gets involved in a smuggling ring and a twenty-five year old unsolved disappearance.


16 – The Affair – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

March 1997. Jack Reacher a former soldier who has been living alone for years finds trouble in a small town called Mississippi, where a soldier’s girlfriend is found with her neck cut from ear to ear by a man who claims he was hired to kill her. He must determine whether the killer was local or from nearby Fort Kelhay. He must go undercover in order to investigate.


17 – A Wanted Man – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

All Jack Reacher needed was a ride to Virginia He soon discovers that he has been hitchhiking more than just a ride. He has tied himself up in knots, in which nothing is true and nobody is telling the whole story.


18 – Never Go Back – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher reaches the headquarters of his old military unit. When he arrives, he finds out that his new commanding officer, Major Turner, has been arrested for murder. He soon finds himself taken into custody for two crimes he allegedly committed during his time in the army. Reacher and Turner were determined to find the truth.


19 – Personal – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher is tasked to find out who took a long-distance shot from the French President’s residence. One of the suspects is a man Reacher tracked down sixteen years ago. He is partnered with Casey Nice, a first year analyst. If anyone can stop Kevin Kott, it’s the man who beat him last time: Jack Reacher. And though he’d rather work alone, Reiner is partnered with Casey Nice, a new analyst who keeps her cool by taking Zoloft. But they’re facing a rough road, filled with ruthless mobsters, Serbian gangsters, close calls, double crosses – and no backup if caught.


20 – Make Me – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher makes a visit to an agrarian town named Mother’s Rest, where he meets a woman named Michelle Chang who asks him for help finding a missing colleague. Reacher has no specific destination to go to and all the time in his life to get there, and he finds something about Chang that makes him team up with her and start asking around.


21 – Night School – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Early 1996. Reacher is still an army sergeant, but he has been assigned to a top secret multi-agency task force An informant working for the CIA in a German sleeper cell has told his handlers that an American wants $100 million. On their own, Reacher and his associates are given little else to go on except for finding the buyer and the sellers and figuring out what they’re selling.


22 – The Midnight Line – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

A man named Reacher walks through a small town in Wisconsin and sees a ring for West Point 2005 in a pawn shop window. It was a rough year to graduate from high school: Iraq, then Afghanistan It’s small, for a woman, but it has her initials engraved inside. Reacher decides to go back to the house where he found the woman and return her lost ring. It starts off with a harrowing journey that takes him across the upper Midwest.


23 – Past Tense – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Jack Reacher walks down the street and waves his arm out to hitchhike. He plans to travel across America by following the sun. He doesn’t get anywhere. He drives down a country road deep in New England’s woods, seeing a sign for a place he has never visited before: the town where his dad was born. He thinks, “What’s one additional day?” He takes the detour.


24 – Blue Moon – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher is on an bus, minding his own busines. He then gets off the bus to help a victim who is clearly just a victim waiting to be helped. He wants to fix things. A few well-meaning people have made a few mistakes, and now they’re in debt to some very bad people! One bold move leads to another, which leads to Reacher finding himself a wanted man in a brutal turf war between two rival Ukrainian and Albanian crime families.


25 – The Sentinel – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Reacher is on an bus, minding his own busines. He then gets off the bus to help a victim who is clearly just a victim waiting to be helped. He wants to fix things. A few well-meaning people have made a few mistakes, and now they’re in debt to some very bad people! One bold move leads to another, which leads to Reacher finding himself a wanted man in a brutal turf war between two rival Ukrainian and Albanian crime families.


26 – Better Off Dead – Jack Reacher

(Free with Audible Trial)

Jack Reacher doesn’t follow anyone’s rules but his own. He walked for hours until he came across a strange sight. A Jeep has crashed through the only tree for miles. A man is slumped over the steering wheel. Michaela Fenton is an army veteran turned FBI Agent. She is searching for her twin brother, who may be mixed up with some very dangerous people. Most of them would prefer to die than betray their terrifying dictator, who has burrow his influence deep into the neighboring city. The shadowy figure known as Dendoncker keeps his dealings secret, hidden from view, and under the radar.

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