The Jack Ryan Universe (publication order)

America is under attack from within. Patients in hospitals, clinics and at home are dying when the drugs they need for survival turn out to be ineffective copies. A corrupt pharmaceutical billionaire has spent millions supporting radical groups while using the chaos they engender to cover his money-making schemes, but for a man with such towering ambitions, the only real goal is power. To get that, he'll have to eliminate the only impediment in his path - Jack Ryan.

1985: For Jack Ryan, the Cold War is burning hot. A top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get their hands on its secrets. In East Berlin, a mysterious figure contacts the CIA with an incredible offer: invaluable details of his government's espionage plans in return for asylum. With the East German secret police closing in, someone will have to go to behind the Berlin Wall to investigate the potential defector.

President Jack Ryan travels to Colombia to support the president who is facing a challenge from autocratic forces. What seems like an ordinary opportunity to preach the values of democracy quickly turns into a nightmare when a full-blown military coup erupts. President Ryan and his Secret Service team are cut off and out of communication. In Washington, the Vice President is coordinating a military response, but there's still one more obstacle.

US intelligence says there's something going on in Russia. While their land forces have been decimated by corruption and incompetence, the Navy seems to be pouring money into some secret project. Analysts are stumped, until the knot is untangled by one particularly bright young woman at the Office of Naval Intelligence - Katie Ryan, the youngest daughter of President Jack Ryan. Like her father, she sees patterns where other don't, and she's determined that the Russians are about to launch a super missile sibmarine, the Belgorod.

Every word a president utters is weighed and examined, but none more so than when he is talking about Taiwan. That's why it's shocking that President Jack Ryan seems to imply that the US has no appetite for a war to protect Taiwan from the communist Chinese on the mainland. President Ryan is determined to protect the independence of the island nation, but he is determined that one slip of the tongue should not cost thousands of young soldiers, sailors and Marines their lives.

Even in a family of strong individualists like the Ryans, Kyle has stood out as a lone wolf. For years he's gone his own way, joining the DIA rather than the CIA, and disagreeing with his father's politics. Now he's missing in an African country on the brink of a coup. His last message to his handlers, "We're on the wrong side of history." His father, the President of the United States, is about to discover which is more important to him: the interests of his country or the life of his son?