Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Paperback

Prompted by disturbing reports of an enormous sea monster, marine biologist Pierre Aronnax joins an expedition to find and destroy it. After barely surviving an attack on the creature, the voyagers discover that their quarry is in fact a remarkably advanced submarine, the Nautilus. Its creator, Captain Nemo, is driven by a thirst for knowledge and by a hatred of civilization--and he refuses to let his "guests" leave. As Aronnax and his companions plot to escape, they are taken on a whirlwind tour of undersea marvels, including volcanoes, a giant squid, and the ruins of Atlantis. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is just as gripping and fantastical a read as it was a century and a half ago, when Jules Verne first imagined traveling beyond the bounds of the possible.

JULES VERNE, the "father of science fiction," was born in Nantes, France, in 1828 and died in 1905. He began writing while studying to be a lawyer; when his father discovered this, he cut him off and Verne was forced to support himself as a stockbroker. Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas offered the young Verne writing advice, and eventually he found a publisher who brought out his first adventure novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, in 1863. Set in Africa, it was an instant hit and made Verne financially independent; he went on to write one to two books a year for the rest of his life.