Here are 100 books that The Island of Doctor Moreau fans have personally recommended if you like
The Island of Doctor Moreau.
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Growing up in Philadelphia, with school and family visits to landmarks like Independence Hall and Betsy Ross’s house, I’ve long been interested in American history. That led me, eventually, to graduate school and my profession as a historian. At the same time, I have greatly enjoyed reading American novelists, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and James Baldwin, as well as the works of thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. DuBois. The sweet spot combining those two interests has been American intellectual history.
This is my candidate for the Great American Novel. Read it for its storyline and its fascinating chapters on whales. Along the way, you’ll encounter discussions about race, religion, friendship, and the virtuous life.
Some of my students ask, “Why does Melville digress so much?” My response: persist in reading this work. What at first seems extraneous becomes vital. You’ll discover a masterpiece.
Melville's tale of the whaling industry, and one captain's obsession with revenge against the Great White Whale that took his leg. Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes a biography of Herman Melville and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom or at home to further engage the reader in the work at hand.
A compelling and unforgettable tale of humanity, resilience, and the lengths we will go to for love. When the end comes, what will you wish you had done?
In 2050s London, a deadly virus sweeps the globe, and the British government decides to evacuate children from the cities while a…
I've enjoyed being frightened my whole life. From childhood, when I watched old monster movies on TV and read forbidden comic books by flashlight, I have always been a fan of scary films and books. To me, horror is one of the essential human emotions by which we interact with the world. The vampire has always been my favorite monster to fear. But over the years, I have watched bloodsuckers shift from monster to anti-hero and, finally, to sexy companion. Personally, I still prefer the old-school vampires of literature—nasty, mean, with blood-covered fangs and a cold, dead heart. Luckily, the scary OG vamps can still be found. Here are some of my favorites.
I have loved this book since it first scared me as a young reader.
And I think this is still the best of all bloodsucker books ever published. While this classic novel didn’t create the myth of vampires, it sure made them iconic. With his fangs and flowing bat-wing cape, Dracula sets the standard for things that go bump in the night. His single purpose is to scare us, and he is good at his job. He has no redeeming values.
This vampire is no charismatic bad boy hoping to win the girl’s heart—he just wants to drink her blood! The original Dracula is a fiend—horrible, frightening, and dangerous. Which is why the book still works after more than a century.
33
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
I’m a geography professor and travel writer. I’ve been writing books about the planet’s hidden and overlooked corners for some years now. In a world where people often imagine that everywhere is known, mapped and probably under the gaze of a security camera, that might seem a tall order. In fact, the world is teeming with places that remain, resolutely, stubbornly, or just weirdly and literally, ‘off the map’. And you don’t have to go far to find them; they can often be found under your feet or just round the corner.
All sorts of islands have been spotted from afar and printed on our maps, only to be revisited years later and found to be ephemeral or just plain delusions. This book is a historical survey of late nineteenth-century British and American attempts to verify islands and establish a final, accurate map of the world. It was an impossible task back then and it is even more challenging today, for islands are coming and going with increasing speed.
Hundreds of islands that once appeared on nautical charts and general atlases are now known to have vanished — or never even existed. How were they detected in the first place? Henry Stommel, an oceanographer and senior scientist at Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, chronicles his fascinating research in documenting the false discoveries of these phantom islands. British and American Hydrographic Offices compiled lists for navigators of reported dangers corresponding to the islands' supposed locations, which formed the basis for Stommel's surveys. These tales, which unfold according to location, blend historical and geographic background with intriguing anecdotal material. They relate…
Prisons are at bursting point. Criminals are released early and the guilty walk free from courts. The Justice system is in a state of collapse and no-one is safe.
i4Ni is created to solve the problem. i4Ni is a humanoid which, according to its 'creator' Jules Von Beck, will serve…
I'm a retired 4-star Admiral who spent over forty years at sea, rising from Midshipman at the Naval Academy to Supreme Allied Commander at NATO. I studied literature and published eleven books, many dealing with the oceans. My PhD from Tufts University, where I served as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, centered on the Law of the Sea Treaty. My father was a seagoing US Marine, my wife grew up in the Navy with a father who was a Navy pilot, and my daughter was a Navy nurse. Finally, my basset hound is named Penelope, after the wife of Ulysses who waited for her husband to return from ten years at sea.
This fascinating little gem of a book is concerned with tiny, largely unknown islands scattered around the world. Schalansky essentially selected them largely for how far they are from big, continental lands. Even after spending a significant portion of my life at sea, I can only claim to have visited or even sailed within sight of about a dozen of them. Most of these small atolls are far from their mother countries. But each of these isolated islands has a story that is inextricably tied to the sea.
Judith Schalansky was born in 1980 on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. The Soviets wouldn't let anyone travel so everything she learnt about the world came from her parents' battered old atlas. An acclaimed novelist and award-winning graphic designer, she has spent years creating this, her own imaginative atlas of the world's loneliest places. These islands are so difficult to reach that until the late 1990s more people had set foot on the moon than on Peter I Island in the Antarctic.
On one page are perfect maps, on the other unfold bizarre stories from the history of…
My interest in kids running their own world largely free of adult intervention probably began with reading Swallows and Amazons and carried on into writing my own book. I love how the kids become important, standing figures, taking on the role of adults while still being kids. It offers the kids an opportunity to take leading roles in their society while also becoming a vehicle by which to potentially explore the true nature of young people. There aren’t very many books that actually do this, and some of them are fairly obscure.
I read the entire series growing up, starting with this one, and to this day, I consider it the best book ever written. The story was so realistic yet exciting and had a wholesome family dynamic. It sparked an enthusiasm towards sailboats among me and my siblings.
The kids, leaving their parents behind to camp on an island, sailing across the lake, fighting mock wars—it was thrilling, and everything worked and made sense. The characters are distinctive and memorable, and all important to the story. Ransome is a genius, and every now and then, I return to this book and revel in my imagination once again.
The ultimate children's classic - long summer days filled with adventure.
John, Susan, Titty and Roger sail their boat, Swallow, to a deserted island for a summer camping trip. Exploring and playing sailors is an adventure in itself but the island holds more excitement in store. Two fierce Amazon pirates, Nancy and Peggy, challenge them to war and a summer of battles and alliances ensues.
'My childhood simply would not have been the same without this book. It created a whole world to explore, one that lasted long in the imagination after the final page had been read' - Marcus…
I’ve always been fascinated by the convergence of the serious and the absurd. Raised on the experimental humor of the 90s, I was delighted to find that weird humor and an absurd sensibility were not limited to experimental novelists of the 20th century. In the literature of the Enlightenment, I found proof that taking a joke to its limit can also produce experimental insight, deep feeling, and intellectual discovery. I discovered a time when early novelists moved seamlessly between satirical mimicry and serious first-person narrative; when esoteric philosophy and scientific abstraction blended in with the weirdness of formalist experimentation. I discovered that the Enlightenment was anything but dull.
I love how this book elevates lying into an art form. Following the convention of the era, Defoe published the work as if it were written by its main character, Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe stands out from its peers for the subtlety of its mimicry. I envy how natural and easy Defoe makes writing look.
The book reveals the novel’s roots in other genres, such as satire, journalism, religious writing, and personal narrative. Defoe excelled at all of these, and I find the strange convergence mesmerizing. It’s possible to see the outlines of these earlier traditions even as something like a modern novel comes into view.
With apologies to Oprah and James Frey, this book helps me remember that the best writers have always been a bit loose with the truth.
'Robinson Crusoe has a universal appeal, a story that goes right to the core of existence' Simon Armitage
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, regarded by many to be first novel in English, is also the original tale of a castaway struggling to survive on a remote desert island.
The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a desert island. In his journal he chronicles his daily battle to stay alive, as he conquers isolation, fashions shelter and clothes, enlists the help of a native islander who he names 'Friday', and fights off cannibals and mutineers. Written in…
In 2126, society finally has its quick fix. ReInception is a machine used for modifying human behaviors, everything from taming unruly children to reprogramming terrorists.
Columbia student Leandrea Justus is passively anti-ReInception. But when she and her boyfriend are separated during a bombing at an anti-ReInception rally, Ward — not…
My greatest passion? Human nature and the endless cycles we repeat, different on the surface yet identical at their core. We build systems, cultures, and rules, destroy them, then rebuild everything in remarkably similar forms, as though we possessed no memory of the past. I have studied human nature throughout my life, but this passion took shape at university through cultural anthropology and comparative theology. Over thirty years, it has guided my work in developing human potential and talent, and has been refined further through working with thousands of people from more than 200 countries and territories. It is now the lens through which I write speculative fiction.
Not everything that seems harmful does us harm, and not everything that seems good does us good.
I love books that make me reconsider the world I live in, and although Brave New World was published in 1932, its use of empty entertainment, sex, drugs, and medicated happiness as instruments of social control feels startlingly contemporary.
In dystopias built around punishment, power forces people to obey; here, pleasure makes them willing. The Romans already understood this through panem et circenses, and I see the same mechanism around us today. We fail to notice the cage because we are too busy seeking it out and locking ourselves inside.
This book broadened my perspective and taught me to look at apparent comforts with more suspicious eyes.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Read the dystopian classic that inspired the hit Sky TV series.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
I was a wild card in the industry heavy town where I was born and raised, destined to burn out my days early in a factory or steel mill. But I worked my way through college, survived several close calls in Vietnam and bull headed my way into a series of jobs that pushed me toward Hollywood assignments as a writer, producer and director.
I liked this hundred-year-old novel because it explores some darker doubts and concerns I have always had about “the hidden heart of mankind unrestrained.” What’s more, the theme of Heart Of Darkness is reflected in the movie Apocalypse Now, with stark modern-day observations on the wounds the violence of war can inflict on the hearts and minds of humans.
Although Polish by birth, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, and Heart of Darkness, first published in 1902, is considered by many his "most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story." — Encyclopaedia Britannica. The tale concerns the journey of the narrator (Marlow) up the Congo River on behalf of a Belgian trading company. Far upriver, he encounters the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who exercises an almost godlike sway over the inhabitants of the region. Both repelled and fascinated by the man, Marlow is brought face to face with the corruption and despair…
I love fantasies that dream up totally new worlds! Some people condemn the fantasy genre as formulaic, and sometimes they’re right—but it shouldn’t be so! Fantasies can explore worlds as wide and wild and wonderful as the human imagination itself! Anything’s possible! But I also love a fantasy world that’s as real, coherent, and consistent as our own real world. I think that’s the ultimate challenge for any author: to create it all from the grassroots up. And for any reader, the trip of a lifetime! My personal preference is for worlds a bit on the dark side—just so long as they blow my mind!
It was a toss-up here between this book and The Scar, set in a different part of the same world. One of Miéville’s acknowledged influences is the wonderful Mervyn Peake, and like Peake, he’s never in a hurry to get a story underway.
I’d have probably tossed Perdido Street Station aside after 100-200 pages except for a friend’s fervent recommendation—and I’d have missed out big time if I had! Because the story as it develops is truly grand, truly epic. Like Peake, Miéville has a gift for raising action to a mythical status. I love, love, love a novel that builds up to a long, rolling, thunderous climax!
Winner of the August Derleth award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Perdido Street Station is an imaginative urban fantasy thriller, and the first of China Mieville's novels set in the world of Bas-Lag.
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians,…
Captain James Heron First Into the Fray
by
Patrick G. Cox,
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
In today’s world, where negativity and dire situations can easily bombard us, I need to consistently ground myself in hope and light. Real stories about transformation and unconditional love are not only uplifting and hopeful, they are also around every corner. Every one of us is capable of transformation and the giving and receiving of unconditional love. It’s through transformation and unconditional love that we may better understand what it means to be human and, thus, build our capacity for compassion for one another. Through compassion, we can create a better world.
What does it mean to be human, and what happens to us when we don’t receive unconditional love?
The two main characters in this Gothic novel, a human and a "monster," are presented in such a way that I questioned which main character was more human. There’s a warning of what can happen when we deny the basic human need for unconditional love.
Shelly’s use of a frame story pulled me in from the first page.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
