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 for our age. This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume that includes a brand-new novella, Too Much Time. Added to these is every other Reacher short story that Child has written: ‘Small Wars’ which takes readers back to 1989, when Reacher is an MP assigned to solve the brutal murder of a young officer found along an isolated forest road in Georgia—and whose killer may be hiding in plain sight. In ‘Not a Drill,’ Reacher tries to take some downtime, but a pleasant hike in Maine turns into a walk on the wild side—and perhaps something far more sinister. ‘High Heat’ time-hops to 1977, when Reacher is a teenager in sweltering New York City during a sudden blackout that awakens the dark side of the city that never sleeps. Okinawa is the setting of ‘Second Son,’ which reveals the pivotal moment when young Reacher’s sharp “lizard brain” becomes just as important as his muscle. In ‘Deep Down,’ Reacher tracks down a spy by matching wits with four formidable females—three of whom are clean, but the fourth may prove fatal. Rounding out the collection are ‘Guy Walks into a Bar,’ ‘James Penney’s New Identity,’ ‘Everyone Talks,’ ‘The Picture of the Lonely Diner,’ ‘Maybe They Have a Tradition,’ and ‘No Room at the Motel.’ Read together, these twelve stories 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.‘If, after sales of more than 70 million, proof of the excellence of his prose is still needed, consider the final paragraph on page 78, where twilight is falling on the city. Acute observation reveals “every detail of the glowing scene”. Many so-called literary novels lack such skill.’ – The London Evening Standard Waterstones have been following the nail-biting exploits of Jack Reacher since he first loped into town in Killing Floor in 1997, a striking figure standing at 6ft5 all dirty-blond hair, with a chip on his shoulder and a lethal ability. His creator Lee Child lays claim to the fact that every second somewhere in the world somebody buys one of his novels. He starts every new novel on the same date, the 1st September and has managed to keep fans coming back for more every time, he says of thriller-writing ‘It's the only real genre and all the other stuff has grown on the side of it like barnacles’.Read by Kerry Shale