Toxic waste bubbles in a ship waiting permission to dock in Odessa. Frank Martin turns down a job in Marseilles, referring it to a pal. A short time later, the pal, wounded by gunfire, crashes his car into Frank's living room and dies, leaving a young woman in the back seat. The employer of the dead man shows up, forces Frank to take the job, snaps a bracelet on his wrist that will explode if Frank gets more than 75 feet from his car, and sends Frank on a journey east with the young woman and a trunk full of something. She's Valentina, nearly mute. Can Frank figure out what's going on, deliver the package, and escape alive? And what does the ship have to do with it?

From the time John J. Macreedy steps off the train in Black Rock, he feels a chill from the local residents. The town is only a speck on the map and few if any strangers ever come to the place. Macreedy himself is tight-lipped about the purpose of his trip and he finds that the hotel refuses him a room, the local garage refuses to rent him a car and the sheriff is a useless drunkard. It's apparent that the locals have something to hide but when he finally tells them that he is there to speak to a Japanese-American farmer named Kamoko, he touches a nerve so sensitive that he will spend the next 24 hours fighting for his life.

After accomplishing the assignment of dismantling a human trafficking organization, the former military and drifter Jack Reacher goes to Washington to invite his liaison, Major Susan Turner, to have dinner with him. However, he meets her substitute, Colonel Sam Morgan, who explains that Major Turner has been arrested and accused of espionage. Jack seeks out her veteran lawyer, Colonel Bob Moorcroft, who explains that Major Turner has also been accused of the murders of two soldiers in Afghanistan. Further, he also tells Jack he is being sued, accused by a woman of being the father of her fifteen year-old daughter, Samantha. When Moorcroft is murdered, Jack is accused of being the killer and sent to a prison. He sees that Turner and he have been framed and also that Turner will be killed by two assassins. However, he rescues her and they flee. Soon, they realize that there is a conspiracy involving military people from the army and a government contractor that is a powerful arms dealer...

Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.