Jack Reacher Novels in Order – Complete List

The Lee Child books for the New York Times bestseller Jack Reacher series, follow an ex-military policeman who likes to travel alone, but who trouble finds no matter in which far away corner of the country he happens to be at the time.

Below you will find the Jack Reacher books in order of publication and with the books in chronological order for Lee Child’s series. From book #25, The Sentinel, Andrew Grant (pen name Andrew Child) also started co-authoring the Jack Reacher thriller book series.

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Jack Reacher Books in Order of Publication

Here are the Jack Reacher books in the order of publication. For the chronological order, keep scrolling.

1. Killing Floor, 1997
2. Die Trying,  1998
3. Tripwire, 1999
4. The Visitor, 2000 – aka Running Blind
5. Echo Burning, 2001
6. Without Fail, 2002
7. Persuader, 2003
8. The Enemy, 2004
9. One Shot, 2005 – prompted the first movie adaptation in 2012 with Tom Cruise
10. The Hard Way, 2006
11. Bad Luck And Trouble, 2007
12. Nothing To Lose, 2007
13. Gone Tomorrow, 2009
14. 61 Hours, 2010
15. Worth Dying For, 2010
16. The Affair, 2011
17. A Wanted Man, 2012
18. Never Go Back, 2013 – second movie adaptation with Tom Cruise
19. Personal, 2014
20. Make Me, 2015
21. Night School, 2016
22. The Midnight Line, 2017
23. Past Tense, 2018
24. Blue Moon, 2019
25. The Sentinel, 2020 – from here on, the books are co-authored with Andrew Child
26. Better Off Dead, 2021
27. No Plan B, 2022
28. The Secret, 2023
29. New Kid in Town (short story), 2024
30. In Too Deep, 2024

The author Lee Child has also written two further short stories that were published in 2011 in one book called James Penney’s New Identity/Guy Walks Into a Bar. Guy Walks Into A Bar is set shortly before the happenings in Gone Tomorrow, which makes the novella book #12.5 in chronological order, while James Penney’s New Identity features Jack still in the Army as a captain.

Jack Reacher Books In Chronological Order – Where to Start With the Series

1. Second Son (#0.5), 2011 – Jack Reacher is only 13 years old – if you discount the actual novels, this could be really the first Jack Reacher book in order of chronology
2. High Heat (#0.6), 2013 – Reacher is almost 17
3. Deep Down  (#0.75), 2012 – the story is set early in Reacher’s military career in 1986
4. Small Wars (#0.8), 2015 – Reacher is a young lieutenant colonel
5. The Enemy (#1), 2004 – Reacher was still an MP in 1990 – the events occurred on 1/1/1990
6. The Secret (#2), 2023 – prequel story that takes place in 1992
7. Night School (#3), 2016 – events occurred in 1996 when Reacher was 35
8. The Affair (#4), 2011 – 6 months before the events happening in Killing Floor when Reacher was 36
9. Killing Floor (#5), 1997
10. Die Trying (#6), 1998
11. Tripwire (#7), 1999
12. The Visitor (#8), 2000 – also under the name of Running Blind
13. Echo Burning (#9), 2001
14. Without Fail (#10), 2002
15. Persuader (#11), 2003
16. One Shot (#12), 2005
17. The Hard Way (#13), 2006
18. Bad Luck And Trouble (#14), 2007
19. Nothing To Lose (#15), 2007
20. Gone Tomorrow (#16), 2009
21. 61 Hours (#17), 2010
22. Worth Dying For (#18), 2010
23. A Wanted Man (#19), 2012
24. High Heat (#19.5), 2013
25. Never Go Back (#20), 2013
26. Everyone Talks (#20.1), 2012 (published in Esquire magazine)
27. Not a Drill ( #20.5), 2014
28. Personal (#21), 2014
29. Make Me (#22), 2015
30. The Midnight Line (#23), 2017
31. Too Much Time (#23.3), 2018
32. The Christmas Scorpion (#23.5), 2018
33. Past Tense (#24), 2018
34. The Fourth Man (#24.5), 2019
35. Blue Moon (#25), 2019
36. The Sentinel (#26), 2020
37. Better Off Dead (#27), 2021
38. No Plan B (#28), 2022
39. New Kid in Town (short story), 2024
40. In Too Deep, 2024

Jack Reacher Short Stories and Novellas in Order of Publication

• Second Son, 2011
• High Heat, 2013
• Deep Down, 2012
• Everyone Talks, 2012 (short story)
• Not a Drill, 2014 (short story)
• Good and Valuable Consideration, 2014 (short story)
• Public Transportation, 2014
• Small Wars, 2015
• James Penney’s New Identity, 2017
• Too Much Time, 2018
• The Christmas Scorpion, 2018
• I Heard a Romantic Story, 2018
• Faking a Murderer, 2018 (MatchUp Collection with Kathy Reichs)
• The Fourth Man, 2019
• Cleaning the Gold, 2019 – with Karin Slaughter
• New Kid in Town (short story), 2024

Other Jack Reacher Stories

• Jack Reacher’s Rules, 2011 (non-fiction)
• No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories, 2017

Who Else Has Written About Jack Reacher? Cameo Appearances

I was quite surprised a while back to learn that Jack Reacher appeared in books by other authors. In some novels he is present, in others, he makes cameo appearances, while yet in others, it is his overwhelming reputation that everyone is talking about. Even though Lee Child himself has never written a spin-off series, there are several series set in the same universe, written with Lee Child’s consent.

Under the Dome by Stephen King, 2010 – Stephen King, a big fan of the Reacher novels, so he paid homage to this character. While Reacher never appears in the novel, he is mentioned several times and is described by Colonel Cox as “the toughest goddam Army cop that ever served, in my humble opinion.”

The Hunt for Jack Reacher series by Diane Capri – FBI agents Otto and Gaspar try to track down Reacher, who never actually appears in the books as a character. Lee Child gave permission for this spin-off series.

The Reacher Experiment series by Jude Hardin, 2019 – the main character is  Rock Wahlman, a Jack Reacher clone. Lee Child gave rights to this spin-off series set in the Jack Reacher universe. The series includes 9 books and it adds a sci-fi flair to the original series.

Jack Reacher Biography – Just Who Is Jack Reacher?

Jack Reacher, the main character of the same-titled series written by Lee Child and recently co-authored with his younger brother, Andrew Child (Andrew Grant), was born on October 29, 1960, in Berlin, Germany, to a U.S. Army family. A former Major in the United States Army Military Police Corps, he served for 13 years, starting from the rank of Military Policeman to the high rank of Major.

Reacher was discharged from the military due to the downsizing of the U.S. Army after the end of the Cold War, and then he became a drifter, which he remains throughout the entire series.

As a drifter, he takes on odd jobs while roaming the United States, and while he’s at it, he investigates all sorts of suspicious and dangerous cases. His nomadic way of life shows his preference for being alone, and also his inability to find a steady job or live in a fixed location.

As for his personal traits, Jack Reacher is six feet five inches tall and weighs around 250 pounds. He is just a massive man with an imposing, often overbearing presence. A highly intelligent person, he is also extremely capable both in terms of physical abilities and ability to gain resources. During his trek around America, he uses all these kills that he got during his military service years.

Reacher has an interesting paradox inside him. He is a solitary person, craving the need to be alone; however, during these many stops across various towns in the country, he has to interact with people. So while he solves whatever he is there to solve, he cannot stick around for very long. While he has several relations over the years with women, he is unable to commit to any of them seriously. He always moves from town to town with only his toothbruth in his pockets.

This also leads to an important aspect of Jack Reacher’s personality: his strict adherence to his moral code. While he loves his solitude, he can’t avoid setting injustice straight and punishing evil. Nevertheless, after doing the job he stopped in town to do, he moves on, once again.

As the series progresses, we notice Reacher’s changes in character. Initially, we learn about him as a mysterious bear of a man who travels across the country, solves cases, and then moves on. Over time, however, he becomes more humanized. We notice in him stronger emotional depth, especially when dealing with the losses of those he cares about. In The Midnight Line, Reacher is deeply hurt by Chang’s loss and is rather empathetic towards Rose Sanderson.

After Lee Child began his co-authorship with Andrew Child, Reacher kept his original character, even after Andrew Child fully took over writing the Jack Reacher novels. However, it is also obvious that Andrew Child injected his writing style and perspectives when further developing our main hero.

In later books, Reacher is also more adapting to modern technologies. He still hates smartphones, but he will use them when necessary.

Jack Reacher Book Summaries – Overview

As of October 2024, there are 29 Reacher books published. Every year, the same month, the author releases a new Jack Reach novel, and even after Andrew Child took over the story, the publication date has not changed, which is an extremely favorable sign in the eyes of all the worldwide fans of the series.

Killing Floor

The first book in the Jack Reacher novel series finds him as he hops off a Greyhound bus at Margrave, Georgia. He wants to find out what happened to Blind Blake, the musician. It only takes him an hour to be arrested for murder. Except, of course, he didn’t do it.

There is an attempt on his life, and he is now more than determined to figure out what is really going on. Without realizing it, Jack has stumbled upon a major counterfeit operation and he knows he needs to take them down.

Die Trying

Jack is now in Chicago when he comes across Holly Johnson. He helps her cross the street when both he and the woman are abducted at gunpoint. They have no idea where they are being taken and why. The van stops at a remote location and now Jack Reacher and Holly need to figure out how to get out of their predicament.

Jack learns that the woman is not just somebody. She is an FBI agent and now the office is also looking for her.

Tripwire

In this book, Jack is in the Florida Keys where he is working as a swimming pool digger while at night he is spending his time as a bouncer at a local strip club. He soon learns that he is a wanted man by someone called Mrs. Jacob, who is actually Jodie Garber, the divorced rich lawyer, daughter of General Leon Garber whom Jack knows from his days back in the Army.

Her father is dying and Jodie wants Jack found right away because there is something Leon wants to tell Jack about a project he’s been working on, one that will interest Jack very much.

Running Blind (The Visitor)

When women who knew Jack Reacher are found dead, Jack is under suspicion. After all, he was the one thing all these women had in common.  Special Agent Julia Lamarr arrests him but then releases him when the body of another woman is found while he is in custody.

Now Reacher decides to investigate this because all these killings have to do somehow with his own past in the military. Jack Reacher, a former US military cop, is a smart guy, a loner and a drifter, as tough as they come. He knew both victims. For Agent-in-Charge Nelson Blake and his team he’s the perfect match. They’re sure only Reacher has the answers to their burning questions: how did these women die? And why?

Echo Burning

True to his name, Jack Reacher is a drifter and right now he is drifting somewhere in Texas near the Mexican border waiting for anyone to pick him up on the highway. That someone turns out to be Carmen who is driving a Cadillac.

Jack soon finds himself mixed up in a case of domestic abuse, kidnapping, and murder. He can never say no to a young woman in distress, even if that woman is Carmen. And at Carmen’s remote ranch in Echo County there is plenty of it: lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Reacher can never resist a lady in distress. Her family is hostile. The cops can’t be trusted. The lawyers won’t help. If Reacher can’t set things straight, who can?

Without Fail

Reacher is approached by a Secret Service agent who needs a favor. She wants him to assassinate the Vice President of the United States. What she doesn’t tell Reacher-but what he soon discovers-is that a very determined and deadly team of assassins has just put the VP in its sights. These men have planned well, but they haven’t planned on Reacher.

For only Reacher has the head and the heart to corner his prey and bring them to justice-without fail. The head of a high-level Secret Service security detail wants Reacher to find the holes in her system — and she wants him to find them fast.

Persuader

Jack Reacher’s approached by a secret agent who wants something from him: to find loopholes in their plan to kill the vice president by penetrating her team’s shield. Unfortunately, there is a real group of assassins who want to do just that. Their plan is near perfect. Why near? Because the one thing they haven’t planned on is Jack Reacher.

So begins Lee Child’s seventh novel. Another heart-stopping page-turner, it brings back Child’s much-loved hero, Jack Reacher, at his pragmatic and uncompromising best.

The Enemy

The Enemy is the prequel to the Jack Reacher series. If you want to read the books in proper order, you should start with this one. It is set in 1990, when in a motel a 2-star general is found dead. Jack has to contain the situation, but what he can’t control is that the general’s wife is soon killed as well – hundreds of miles away. When all things seem to fall apart, Jack is chosen as the fall guy. But what nobody has counted on is Jack himself. Still, Jack is also fighting his inner demons when he learns secrets about his family and his past. Secrets that will change Jack forever.

One Shot

When in a small Indiana town a gunman commits the ultimate crime killing five people with six shots, the killer is found. The case is closed. But the shooter says he didn’t do it and he asks for Jack Reacher by name. When Jack sees the news about the shooting, he heads in that direction even though he’s many, many miles away.  Reacher is teamed with a young defense lawyer who is working against her D.A. He doesn’t go there because the man asked for him. Reacher heads there because he wants to make sure he is prosecuted – after all, he did get away many years ago when he did the same thing during the Persian Gulf War. And Jack can’t let him get away once more.

The Hard Way

Jack is this time in New York City relaxing and watching the world move by. He sees a guy going towards his Mercedes. Little does he know that he will soon get involved in a case of kidnapping for ransom. Once he starts investigating, he realizes that all the clues led him to the wrong end.

Now he has to do it the hard way to get back on track and finally find the kidnapped woman and her child. On the trail of a vicious kidnapper, Reacher is learning the chilling secrets of his employer’s past…and of a horrific drama in the heart of a nasty little war. He’s beginning to realize that Edward Lane is hiding something. Something dirty. Something big. But Reacher also knows this: he’s already in way too deep to stop now.

Bad Luck And Trouble

Jack is on the move again, this time in Portland. Soon after a man is thrown down a moving helicopter to his death in the California desert, a woman in Chicago learns that her friend, an investigator with a past in the army is dead. When Reacher checks his bank account, he sees more money than he should have.

He realizes that the money is actually an encoded message. Now Jack has to put his old army unit back together to investigate the murders before they are next. The deeper they dig, the more they don’ t know: about two other comrades who have suddenly gone missing—and a trail that leads into the neon of Vegas and the darkness of international terrorism.

Nothing To Lose

As usual on the road, Jack Reacher is passing through two towns: Hope and Despair. What he finds there though is not what he expected and definitely not a cup of coffee. Instead, he is jailed and then is asked to leave town. He is even driven by the police some five miles out of the town edges. But he can’t just leave, because there are some mysteries he definitely needs to solve.

He can’t do it otherwise. It’s in his blood. Now, between a town and the man who owns it, between Reacher and his conscience, something has to give. And Reacher never gives an inch.

Gone Tomorrow

Jack is in New York and one night he witnesses something bad on the subway. Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they’re nervous. By definition they’re all first-timers. People who know he saw all this contact him and ask him some weird questions. Eventually, he decides that the best course of action is to investigate what happened directly.

The train brakes for Grand Central Station. Will Reacher intervene, and save lives? Or is he wrong? Will his intervention cost lives – including his own?

61 Hours

Reacher is on a bus that leaves him stranded due to an accident in  Bolton, South Dakota, a small town in the middle of winter. The town is the proud neighbor of a military site that seems to be abandoned, and Jack senses all kinds of troubles in the town.

As he has nothing better to do, he decides to stay put and investigate. After all, Bolton is a good place as any to stay for a while. In 61 Hours, Lee Child has written a showdown thriller with an explosive ending that readers will talk about for a long time to come.

Worth Dying For

By now, Reacher has stopped in a small town with troubles of its own. Soon everyone wants him dead, including the major runner of the town, the Duncans. While he does want to get to Virginia, he senses that he needs to remain there to solve the town’s problems because that’s what he usually does. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to keeping on going, to put some distance between himself and the hardcore trouble that’s bearing down on him.

For Reacher, that was also impossible. Worth Dying For is the kind of explosive thriller only Lee Child could write and only Jack Reacher could survive – a heart-racing page-turner no suspense fan will want to miss.

The Affair

This story happens about half a year before Killing Floor, in 1997, when Reacher was still in the U.S. Army. Jack still works in the military police working undercover in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. He currently has to investigate the murder of a woman who was found behind a bar in town.

The town is very important to the Army for some secret reason, so no scandals are allowed in town. He soon hooks up (in both ways) with Elizabeth Deveraux, the local sheriff, and together they start to investigate the crime. However, the more Reacher tries to uncover the truth, the more other forces are trying to bury it forever.

A Wanted Man

The book continues the story started in Worth Dying For. Jack Reacher hitches a ride to Virginia. He is in Nebraska, standing by the road on an Interstate highway, waiting for a ride. When a car finally stops, he meets two men and a woman, all dressed in matching clothes.

What he doesn’t know is that the three have left behind a body, a man stabbed to death. Reacher realizes from their conversations that things are not quite as they seem, and soon he gets, once again, involved in more than most people could handle. Not Reacher, though.

Never Go Back

Well, Reacher has finally made it to Virginia. He decides to visit Major Susan Turner, the new commander officer of the 110th MP, where he once was. But when he gets there, Susan is not at her desk. She seems to be in prison, and what’s worse, Jack himself is charged with two old crimes.

Jack says he has no idea what the cases are, but he suddenly finds himself in the army again, at least until all is sorted out. There is a deep conspiracy going on and Reacher will stay at the base only if just to find out what exactly is going on there.

Personal

Finally, Jack goes overseas. When someone has tried to kill the president of France from very far away, there is only one man who could have pulled such a feat. And Jack knows him very well. So Jack is now sent to Europe to find the sniper because if he doesn’t, the assassin might take him out instead. All the while Reacher can’t stop thinking about the woman he once failed to save. But he won’t let that happen again. Not this time. Not Nice.

Also, Jack was the one who arrested that guy and sent him to prison, so he knows he can do it again. Reacher never gets too close. But now a killer is making it personal.

Make Me

Jack is back at home, this time getting off a train at a tiny town called Mother’s Rest. The name is strange, to say the least, so Jack wants to find out more about it. He is soon approached by a woman, Michelle Chang, who believes him to be someone else. When she realizes her mistake, Jack tells her that there was no one else on that train as big as Jack. He was the only one.

What he soon realizes is that bad guys are in town and they’re watching Chang’s every move. And because of that, those same bad guys have their eyes on him as well. And when he smells the conspiracy that lurks in the town, he must investigate, no matter what.

Night School

It is 1996 and Jack has just successfully completed a mission. Now he is sent to a night school course where he meets two other guys who have equally just finished their own successful missions as well.

This is when they all learn that they are not actually in school. Instead, they are to work together on a very secret mission involving Jihadists located in Hamburg, Germany. From Langley to Hamburg, Jalalabad to Kiev, Night School moves like a bullet through a treacherous landscape of double crosses, faked identities, and new and terrible enemies, as Reacher maneuvers inside the game and outside the law.

The Midnight Line

Reacher is back in Wisconsin when he sees in the window of a pawn shop a very small ring. It is, however, not a simple ring. It is the class ring of West Point 2005. From its size, he knows it belongs to a woman, and Jack becomes curious about the owner. Did she sell her ring? Was it stolen from her? What happened that it ended at the pawn shop? 

Of course, as usual, Jack Reacher finds plenty of trouble while trying to discover the identity and fate of the ring owner.

Past Tense

On the road again, Jack lands in New England, so he decides to visit the town where his father is from, Laconia. Except when he gets there, there isn’t any mention of a Reacher anywhere. There is a parallel story involving Shorty and Patty who are stranded and have to stop at a hotel which turns out to be weird, to say the least.

But when he starts looking for his dad’s old home, he finds there’s no record of anyone named Reacher ever having lived there. Eventually, the two stories merge and we learn what the two people and Jack have in common.

Blue Moon

In Blue Moon we meet Jack Reacher again on a bus heading towards where the road takes him, when he comes across an older man whom he wants to help. However, it backfires on him and now, the old couple owes money to some evil people who want to collect.

The more Reacher tries to help the older couple, the more he gets in between two very dangerous gangs, an Albanian and an Ukrainian one, who won’t let Reacher come between them and their money. But Reacher has his own sense of justice and he won’t let it go until it is fully served.

The Sentinel

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.

Better Off Dead

Reacher is out for a walk in the hot desert sun when he comes across a crashed Jeep that has smashed into a tree with its driver slumped over the wheel. The woman isn’t dead, and her name is Michaela Fenton, an army veteran turned FBI agent who is out looking for her twin brother who got himself into some trouble. 

Reacher is good at finding people who don’t want to be found, so he offers to help, despite feeling that Fenton is keeping secrets of her own.

No Plan B

In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away. 

When another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. But Reacher is unaware that these crimes are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid on the run, a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste to track down those responsible. For when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B.

The Secret

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead.  A prequel story that takes place in 1992 with stuff going back to 1969, has Reacher summoned to Washington DC to head a task force that should detangle an old story where a team of scientists fell to their deaths and a secret was never revealed thereafter.

But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind . . . or his own kind?

Reacher had no idea where he was. No idea how he had gotten there. But someone must have brought him. And shackled him. And whoever had done those things was going to rue the day. That was for damn sure.

Jack Reacher wakes up alone, in the dark, handcuffed to a makeshift bed. His right arm has suffered some major damage. His few possessions are gone. He has no memory of getting there. The last thing Reacher can recall is the car he hitched a ride in getting run off the road. The driver was killed. His captors assume Reacher was the driver’s accomplice and patch up his wounds as they plan to make him talk.

Jack Reacher TV Adaptations and Movies

While the Jack Reacher novels are extremely popular and have a very healthy fan base, viewers coming primarily from the Reacher series on Amazon Prime Video might also want even more Jack Reacher thrillers, and with good reason. The book series, with its almost 30 novels, is a great source of reading and learning more about this amazing character. In addition, there are also Jack Reacher movies and other adaptations that viewers can check out.

Read the Jack Reacher Novels in Publication Order or Chronological Order?

If you want to catch up to the order of chronological order of the Jack Reacher books, you should start with The Enemy (which is book #8 in publication order and was written in 2004). The book chronologically covers the very end of the time Jack was in the military, and it transitions into the first book written, Killing Floor. The Jack Reacher books in order of publication are another way to read the series, which works as well.

In addition, Persuader has a few flashbacks to Reacher’s military career, but as for reading the book, you can easily read it in the regular publication order.

Also, some of the short stories should be read before Killing Floor. In one of the novellas Second Son, Jack is merely 13, and in High Heat, he is a 16-year-old teenager.

• 61 Hours – won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2011
• 61 Hours – won the Novel of the Year award at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in 2011
• A Wanted Man – was named Book of the Year by Crime Book of the Year at the Specsavers National Book Awards in 2012
• Lee Child received the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger for his outstanding body of work in crime fiction in 2013.
• Personal – received the VIII RBA Award for Crime Writing in 2014. As Lee Child could not attend the festivity in Barcelona, his literary agent, Mary Darby took it for him instead.
• Lee Child was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2019