Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

Edmond Dantès is imprisoned on a false charge, escapes, finds a fortune and spends the rest of the book settling accounts. The best revenge story ever written, in the original French.

Alexandre Dumas

Phileas Fogg bets half his fortune that he can circle the globe in eighty days, and sets off with a French valet and a detective on his heels. Short chapters and constant movement.

Jules Verne

Huck fakes his own death and floats down the Mississippi on a raft with Jim, a man escaping slavery. Funnier and darker than the Tom Sawyer book that precedes it.

Mark Twain

A scout and his two Mohican companions escort a pair of sisters through hostile country during the French and Indian War. The frontier adventure that set the template for the genre.

James Fenimore Cooper

D'Artagnan arrives in Paris with a horse nobody wants and manages to pick three duels before lunch. Dumas at his most entertaining, complete and in French.

Alexandre Dumas