A Jack Ryan Novel (chronological order)

CIA analyst Jack Ryan, historian and former Marine, is vacationing in London with his wife and young daughter. Suddenly, right before his eyes, a terrorist group launches its deadly attack. Instinctively, Jack dives forward to intervene. By his impulsive act, he gains both the gratitude of a nation and the enmity of its most dangerous men who will not sit on their hate. In an explosive wave of violence, Jack's new enemies will seek to make him pay for his act of salvation...with his life.

Tom Clancy returns to Jack Ryan's early days, in an extraordinary new novel of global political drama. Ryan's first days on the job at the CIA put him into a high-stakes game, playing for the life of the Pope and the stability of the Western world.

In the Soviet hills of Dushanbe near the Afghanistan border, an otherworldly array of pillars and domes rises into the night. Between the USA and the Soviet Union, no contest is more urgent than the race to build the first missile defense system, and no one knows that more than the two men charged with assessing the Soviet's capabilities: Colonel Mikhail Filitov of the Soviet Union, an old-line warrior distrusted by the army's new inner circle of technocrats, and CIA analyst Jack Ryan, hero of the Red October affair. Each must use all his craft to arrive at the truth, but Filitov gets there first?

At what point does criminal activity threaten national security? When can a nation respond to it as to an enemy? These are the questions Jack Ryan must consider when he hears the awful news: Colombian drug lords, tired of being harassed by US law enforcement agents, have assassinated three high American officials, and that is just the beginning. The message is clear: Leave us alone. But they have pushed too far. Someone steps quietly over the line they have drawn, deploying covert-action teams in Colombia, intending to take the fight to the enemy.

Peace may finally be at hand in the Middle East - as Deputy Director of the CIA Jack Ryan lays the groundwork for a peace plan that could end centuries of conflict. But ruthless terrorists have a final, desperate card to play: they have their hands on a nuclear weapon and have placed it on American soil in the midst of an escalation in tension with the Soviet Union. The terrorists hope to rekindle cold war animosity and prevent reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Razio Yamata is one of Japan's most influential industrialists, and part of a relatively small group of authority who wield tremendous authority in the Pacific Rim's economic powerhouse. He has devised a plan to cripple the American greatness, humble the US military, and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage. Yamata's motivation lies in his desire to pay off a Debt of Honor to his parents and to the country he feels is responsible for their deaths - America.

The US President, along with most of the Cabinet and Congress, is dead. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President of the United States is told that he is now President. President John Patrick Ryan. With stunning force, Ryan's responsibilities crush on him. He must calm an anxious and grieving nation, all while attempting to reconstitute a Cabinet and a Congress with the greatest possible speed.

President Jack Ryan faces a world crisis unlike any he has ever known. A high-level assassination attempt in Russia has the newly elected Ryan sending his most trusted eyes and ears - including antiterrorism specialist John Clark - to Moscow, for he fears the worst is yet to come. And he’s right. The attempt has left the already unstable Russia vulnerable to ambitious forces in China eager to fulfill their destiny. If they succeed, the world as we know it will never look the same. If they fail, the consequences may be unspeakable.

It is The Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to eliminate terrorists and those who protect them. Officially, it has no connection to the American government - a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong.

Privately training with special forces, he’s honing his combat skills to continue his work within the Campus, hunting down and eliminating terrorists wherever he can--even as Jack Ryan Sr. campaigns to become President of the United States again. But what neither father nor son knows is that the political and personal have just become equally dangerous. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately-funded vendetta to discredit him and connect him to a mysterious killing in his longtime ally John Clark’s past. All they have to do is catch him.

The Campus has been discovered. And whoever knows they exist knows they can be destroyed. Meanwhile, President Jack Ryan has been swept back into the Oval Office - and his wisdom and courage are needed more desperately than ever. Internal political and economic strife has pushed the leadership of China to the edge of disaster. And those who wish to consolidate their power are using the opportunity to strike at long-desired Taiwan, as well as the Americans who have protected the tiny nation.

Decades ago, when he was a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan, Sr. was sent on what was supposed to be a simple support mission to investigate the death of an operative looking into the suspicious banking activities at a Swiss bank. Ryan’s dogged tenacity uncovered not only financial deceit, but also the existence of a KGB assassin code-named Zenith.

A North Korean ICBM crashes into the Sea of Japan. A veteran CIA officer is murdered in Ho Chi Minh City, and a package of forged documents goes missing. The pieces are there, but assembling the puzzle will cost Jack Ryan, Jr., and his fellow Campus agents precious time. Time they don't have.

Abandoned by other international leaders, Jack Ryan alone counters the threat posed by Russian president Valeri Volodin. This isn't the first time that the dictator has threatened world peace, but this time he's playing a very nuanced game, moving chess pieces around the board while isolating Ryan from the rest of the international community. Fortunately, Jack Ryan, Jr. and the rest of his Campus team find themselves in the middle of action with a vital clue to the Russian's intentions.

A US Navy commander is attacked by an unidentified Russian man while having dinner with his wife. A CIA operative travelling on a Canadian passport is intercepted and interrogated at Tehran Airport. A team of FBI officers are arrested by Indonesian police for travelling under fake passports in Jakarta. These apparently unrelated incidents point to a compromise in US government security, and Jack Ryan and his team must find out where it is coming from.

As the world shakes from seemingly disparate outbursts of terrorism, Jack Ryan prepares for a crucial negotiation with President Zhou's increasingly hostile China. But when a routine traffic stop on an isolated road in rural Texas leads to the discovery of a stolen USB stick, it becomes clear there is a dark connection between the attacks. With tensions rising, a US spy ship in the South China Sea gets caught up in a violent storm - a storm which threatens to push it into the path of the Chinese navy, with potentially disastrous consequences.

On a crowded tourist beach in Portugal, US operatives use a high-tech drone to watch a French arms dealer flirt with a beautiful woman. It's only when she leaves that they realise she has shot him dead. In Iran, protests are growing against the oppressive regime, whipped up by a charismatic student. Most external observers are excited, but on the ground a spy of questionable loyalty senses something is badly amiss.