Tom Clancy is the author of "The Hunt for Red October", "Rainbow Six" and "The Bear and the Dragon".

Booksellers, oil those tills. Tom Clancy returns to Jack Ryan's early days in a swiftly-moving novel of global political drama. Long before he was President, Jack Ryan was a novice CIA analyst; one of his first assignments was to debrief a high-level Soviet defector who told an amazing tale of officials planning to assassinate Pope John Paul. In the end, however, it will not just be the Pope's life, but the stability of the Western world that is at stake. Clancy's books (such as The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger) famously lack nuance, but are perfectly tooled machines for raising the pulse of the reader. And Clancy's jaw-dropping sales are the envy of all his many rivals.

Tom Clancy lives in Maryland. His books include THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, RAINBOW SIX and THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON, all of whihc have been international bestsellers.