The Mysterious Island was published in 1874, and it is one of Verne's longest novels. The plot depicts a group of men who have become castaways stranded on an island in the Pacific during the American Civil War. The novel describes their attempts not only to survive but also, with the aid of the scientific and technological know-how, to rebuild their world from the meager resources of the island. At the end, however, it is realized that Captain Nemo,...

First English edition of a classic Verne novel. Describes the exploits of Berber nomads and European travelers in Saharan Africa. The European characters arrive to study the feasibility of flooding a low-lying region of the Sahara desert to create an inland sea and open up the interior of Northern Africa to trade. In the end, however, the protagonists' pride in humanity's potential to control and reshape the world is humbled by a cataclysmic earthquake...

Forecasts the modern totalitarian state and the possibility of launching an artificial satellite.

Albert Richwick, an English country gentleman, witnesses the transformation of a fox, hunted down by a pack of hounds, into a lovely creature, Sylva, whom he takes into his home as his niece. Untamed, certainly not housebroken, she is a desirable but redolent place. He confides her origins only to the nurse he hires, and to his old friends, Dr. Sullivan and his daughter, Dorothy, whom he had once loved. His attempts to domesticate her are only slowly...

The weigher of souls: An excellent novella concerning a hypothetical meeting of experimental science and theological supposition, bringing into sharp focus questions about the morality of scientific inquiry into human nature. The Earth Dwellers: Deals with inhabitants of Uranus who fail to understand the supposedly inferior inhabitants of Earth.

As she roams through the galaxy with her space-faring friends, vexing villains and thwarting tyranny, a mischievous girl pirate named Sardine leaves a little time for baking and bedtime stories.