Frank Meyer had got out of 'the life' safely. He had put an end to his mercenary days, turned over a new leaf and settled down with his wife and children. It had been a hard decision but, encouraged by his boss and friend Joe Pike, he had walked away. Ten years later, a group of armed men break into his Los Angeles home and brutally gun down him and his family. It's a vicious, cold and professional job. The crew leave no trace behind except the bodies.

Elvis Cole. All round nice guy. Always the first man to help a stranger in distress. This time, however, he's paid the ultimate price for trying to be the good Samaritan. Joe Pike. A fierce protector and a dangerous enemy. This time his tough guy exterior will be tested to the limit as he risks everything to save his closest friend. The clock is ticking now that Elvis has been Taken.

A long time ago, Joe Pike asked for help. In return, he would, one day, be called upon to return the favour, no questions asked. That day has come. Joe Pike is asked to protect the life of Larkin Conner Barkley, a spoiled rich girl who happens to be a federal witness in a major case. But someone is leaking information about their whereabouts, and the killers are getting all too close. So Pike hatches a plan: disappear into the anonymous underbelly of Los Angeles, turn the tables and hunt down the hunters.

Elvis Cole is hired to find a woman who’s disappeared, a seemingly ordinary case, until he learns the missing woman is an explosives expert and worked for a Defense Department contractor. Meanwhile, LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, track a fugitive to a house filled with explosives - and a dead body. As the two cases intertwine, they all find themselves up against shadowy arms dealers and corrupt officials, and the very woman they promised to save may be the cause of their own deaths.

On his own turf in L.A., PI Elvis Cole is embroiled in a controversial, high-profile murder case. A wealthy restaurateur is accused of murdering his wife and his hot-shot defence lawyer hires Cole to find proof that the detective on the case, Angela Rossi, fooled around with the evidence. Yet as Elvis investigates Rossi for the defence team, he begins to be more suspicious of the media-loving lawyers than the cops.

When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole's Disney-deco office, she's lost something very valuable - her husband and young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn't thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood's studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs and sex - and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it's also turned ugly.

Elvis Cole's girlfriend, Lucy, is out of town and she has left her young son, Ben, in Elvis' care. Elvis and Lucy have had a few problems lately - not least over his job as a private investigator. But at last things seem to be getting better. Then Ben disappears. One minute he's playing his computer game in Elvis' house; the next he has vanished. Elvis looks everywhere, but he just can't find Ben; and neither can Lucy when she arrives.

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 turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs.

Hired to uncover the past of Jodi Taylor, an actress in a hit TV show, Elvis leaves his native Los Angeles to head for Louisiana in search of Jodi's biological parents. But before he can tackle the mystery of Jodi's background, he is up against a whole host of eccentrics, including a crazed Raid-spraying housewife, a Cajun thug who looks like he's been made out of spare parts and a menacing hundred-year-old river turtle named Luther.

Joe Pike didn't expect to rescue a woman that day. He went to the bank same as anyone goes to the bank, and returned to his Jeep. So when Isabel Roland, the lonely young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, Joe is on hand when two men abduct her. Joe chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But instead of putting the drama to rest, the arrests are only the beginning of the trouble for Joe and Izzy.

 When single-mother Devon Connor hires Elvis Cole, it’s because her troubled teenage son Tyson is flashing cash and she’s afraid he’s dealing drugs. But the truth is devastatingly different. With two others, he’s been responsible for a string of high-end burglaries, a crime spree that takes a deadly turn when one of them is murdered and Tyson and his girlfriend disappear. They stole the wrong thing from the wrong man, and, determined to get it back, he has hired two men who are smart and brutal and the best at what they do.

Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his "white static", the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man's widow with some home repairs. Under her dilapidated porch, he finds more than he bargained for.

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.

Jack Reacher hits the pavement and sticks out his thumb. He plans to follow the sun on an epic trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn't get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been: the town where his father was born. He thinks, What's one extra day? He takes the detour. 

Her name is Atlee Pine, the latest creation from best-selling author David Baldacci. She has unstoppable tenacity, always a fighter who is unwilling to cede any ground. She has endured real nightmares, and she has the emotional and physical scars to show for it. And she got those long before she became an adult. She is an FBI Special Agent assigned to the wilds of the western US. She has to cover, often solo, vast tracts of area: Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona.