The Mysterious Island. This item is unavailable.The Mysterious Island

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, a man who survived by himself for almost five years on an uninhabited Pacific island off the coast of Chile, Jules Verne's masterpiece, The Mysterious Island, is a tale of five men and a dog who escape Civil War Richmond in a balloon during a storm. Landing on a faraway and uncharted island, they overcome nature's harsh elements to create from scratch a civilization for themselves. Peculiar things start to happen as they learn to survive on the island, including the mysterious, sudden death of a strange animal after it viciously attacks Top, the dog, and the discovery of a bullet in a wild pig that none of them put there. Mystery, suspense, and science fiction are all combined in one story, as the men ultimately learn the secret at the heart of the island.

Jordan Stump is an associate professor of French at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and the translator of more than half a dozen French novels. Two of his translations have been nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest and most international prize of its kind.

Caleb Carr is the author of The Alienist and, most recently, Killing Time. He lives in New York.