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Must-read sci-fi classics

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Children's reading lists

9 books for fans of pirate stories

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Puffin Classics: the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child 
Rediscover the Puffin Classics collection and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this epic edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. 
 
An ancient book is opened by the eccentric Professor Lidenbrock and his life – and the life of his nephew Axel – is changed for ever. An old piece of paper has tumbled from the book, a priceless parchment that will lead them on a terrifying journey to find what lies at the centre of the Earth.

Jules Verne was born in France in 1828 and died in 1905. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel was wildly successful, producing many brilliant novels in the burgeoning genre of science fiction: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days, among others. Verne is the second most translated author in the world, after Agatha Christie and before Shakespeare.

Rediscover the Puffin Classics collection and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this epic edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. 
 
An ancient book is opened by the eccentric Professor Lidenbrock and his life – and the life of his nephew Axel – is changed for ever. An old piece of paper has tumbled from the book, a priceless parchment that will lead them on a terrifying journey to find what lies at the centre of the Earth.

Around the World in Eighty Days

Rediscover the Puffin Classics collection and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this epic edition of Around the World in Eighty Days. 
 One night, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the world in just eighty days, and the very next day he sets out from the port of Dover with his servant Passeportout to achieve his aim. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous places, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - always racing against the clock. Despite countless surprises along the way and a last-minute setback, that could make all the difference, will Phileas win his bet?

Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Starter Level: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (ELT Graded Reader)

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. 
 
Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. 
 
The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. 
 
Visit the Penguin Readers website 
Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys. 
 
There is a new animal in the sea, and it is killing people . . . "We can find it!" says Captain Farragut. But what do they find? And can they stop it?

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a Starter level Reader, is A1 in the CEFR framework. Starter level is ideal for readers who are learning English for the first time. Short sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, using the present simple and continuous tenses, possessives, regular and irregular verbs, and simple adjectives. Illustrations support the text throughout, and many titles at this level are graphic novels. 
 
There is a new animal in the sea, and it is killing people . . . "We can find it!" says Captain Farragut. But what do they find? And can they stop it?

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Jules Verne's most famous adventure, now in a beautiful clothbound edition 
 
One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days.  Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout.  Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.

Two BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea & The Mysterious Island

Jules Verne's two novels featuring Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island), condensed down to two thrilling hours

Jules Verne's two novels featuring Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island), condensed down to two thrilling hours. 
 
In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Marine scientist Professor Aronnax and his stowaway daughter Connie join whaler Ned Land aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to hunt an aggressive sea monster, believed to be a giant narwhale. When they engage the monster, they find to their astonish&shy;ment it's an electrically-powered submarine, the Nautilus, techno&shy;logically far superior to any vessel known. They are rescued by the ship's enigmatic captain, Nemo... 
 
In The Mysterious Island, military engineer Cyrus Smith, his freed slave Neb, and reporter Grace Spilett - flee the besieged city of Richmond in a balloon. Their vessel is caught in a vast storm and blown thousands of miles until it crashes on a remote Pacific island. But they soon realise that they are not alone on the island... 
 
Cast of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 
Captain Nemo - Sagar Arya 
Professor Pierre Aronnax - Neil McCaul 
Miss Connie Aronnax - Madeline Hatt 
Ned Land - David Seddon 
Captain Farragut - Philip Bretherton 
 
Cast of The Mysterious Island 
Cyrus Harding - Nathan Osgood 
Grace Spilett - Kerry Gooderson 
Neb - Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong 
Tom Ayrton - Rupert Holliday Evans 
Captain Nemo - Sagar Arya

Penguin Classics

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

'It is a ripping yarn, but it is also an eerie tale of isolation and madness ... with a compellingly Byronic central character' Guardian 
 
Combining thrilling adventure with scientific facts and a wonder at the natural world, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is Jules Verne's most enduringly popular novel. It begins when a vast black object is spotted menacing the oceans, causing panic over the world. When Professor Aronnax joins an expedition to hunt down the creature, he and his two companions discover it is a giant submarine, the Nautilus. Captured and held prisoner on board by its captain, Nemo - unpredictable, enigmatic, exiled from humanity - they have no choice but to travel the terrifying underwater depths with him. 
 
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by David Coward

Jules Verne (Author) Jules Verne was born in France in 1828 and died in 1905. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel was wildly successful, producing many brilliant novels in the burgeoning genre of science fiction: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days, among others. Verne is the second most translated author in the world, after Agatha Christie and before Shakespeare. David Coward (Translator) David Coward is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Leeds and has translated many books from French for Penguin Classics.

In this thrilling adventure tale, three men embark on an epic journey under the sea with the mysterious Captain Nemo aboard his submarine, the Nautilus. Over the course of their fantastical voyage, they encounter the lost city of Atlantis, the South Pole and the corals of the Red Sea, and must battle countless adversaries, both human and monstrous. This new version by acclaimed translator David Coward brings Verne's novel vividly to life for a new generation of readers.

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

A thrilling new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jules Verne's novel

A thrilling new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jules Verne's classic novel. 
 
‘Descend, bold traveller into the crater of the Jokul of Snæfell, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July and you will attain the centre of the earth. Which I have done.’ 
 
Renowned professor Otto Lidenbrock discovers a mysterious runic cryptogram in a rare manuscript. His nephew, Axel, accidentally cracks the code, which is by a Sixteenth Century alchemist who claims to have found a pathway to the centre of the Earth! Lidenbrock decides he must see for himself if such a journey is possible, and with the reluctant Axel and their guide, Hans, the three venture into the heart of a dormant Icelandic volcano. 
 
Shock and peril await at every turn, from a raft voyage across a subterranean sea - where they witness a battle between two prehistoric monsters - to a terrifying lightning storm that threatens to capsize them, and an expedition into the magma chamber of an active volcano filled with boiling lava. Will they ever make it back to the surface? 
 
Full of action, surprise and discovery, this suspenseful dramatisation of Verne’s ultimate adventure story stars Joel MacCormack and Stephen Critchlow. 
 
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes approx.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Round the World in Eighty Days

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

Jules Verne remains the most celebrated 19th-century writer of science fiction. This hardback Everyman volume reprints his three most popular novels.

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days 
 
 
INTRODUCER BIOGRAPHY: 
Michael Sheringham is Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature and Fellow of All Souls, Oxford.

In Journey to the Centre of the Earth, an obsessive German professor and his nephew travel towards the earth’s core in the steps of a medieval explorer beneath an Icelandic volcano where they discover a lost world. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is famous for its portrayal of the Byronic Captain Nemo and his submarine, the Nautilus, in which he explores the ocean while wreaking vengeance on mankind for their wickedness. In Around the World in Eighty Days, a starchy Englishman suspected of robbing the Bank of England accepts a bet that he cannot circumnavigate the globe in that time, and proceeds to do so, accompanied by his resourceful valet, Passepartout. 
 
The three novels combine fantasy and rich local colour with true learning and cod science in a mixture which attracts readers of all ages.

Extra-special futuristic 3D edition! Each book comes with 3D glasses! 
 
From the grandpère of science fiction - a perilous and astonishing adventure into the earth's core that details encounters with natural hazards, forty foot mushrooms and prehistoric beasts.

Verne's imagination has given us some of the greatest adventure stories of all time

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is one of the most famous novels ever written. Verne has left us an extraordinary book, which has withstood the test of time better than some of the science described within it. It has brought delight to generations of readers, and will for many more. There is nothing so rare as the chance to take an impossible journey, and to believe it so powerfully that we wonder if we will make it out alive. That's magic. And that's Verne's gift.

The reason Verne is still read by millions today is simply that he was one of the best storytellers who ever lived

Fantasised a parallel world to ours under the earth's crust. This hypothesis was both popular and subscribed to, even by reputable scientists, in the 19th century. Verne's tale was flagrantly ripped off; (by Edgar Rice Burroughs, among others, with his "Pellucidar" series) but remains the best of its (scientifically) preposterous kind.

Jules Vernes most spectacular visions of the future have remained classic science fantasies

Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in the city of Nantes, France. He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days. Verne is often referred to as the 'Father of science fiction' because he wrote about space, air and underwater travel before aeroplanes, spacecrafts and submarines were invented. He died in 1905.

Read this perilous and astonishing adventure into the earth's core. 
 
After decoding a scrap of paper in runic script, the intrepid Professor Lidenbrock and his nervous nephew Axel travel across Iceland to find the secret passage to the centre of the earth. Enlisting the silent Hans as a guide, the trio encounter a perilous and astonishing subterranean world of natural hazards, curious sights, prehistoric beasts and sea monsters. 
 
‘Verne's imagination has given us some of the greatest adventure stories of all time’ Daily Mail

Extra-special futuristic 3D edition! Each book comes with 3D glasses! 
 
From the grandpère of science fiction - an adventure classic of deep-sea volcanoes, giant squid and the renegade scientist Captain Nemo

Unbearably thrilling and romantic...full of Verne's gentle humour

Among the deep-sea volcanoes, shoals of swirling fish, giant squid and sharks, Captain Nemo steers the Nautilus. Nemo is the renegade scientist par excellence, a man madly inventive in his quest for revenge

Fabulous...the pace is sharp and the story as dramatic and engaging as ever

One of the books I have read and re-read with unfailing pleasure and interest is Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea....  Verne's novel entranced me. I was in love with Captain Nemo, the brooding cultured misanthrope of the deeps, who combined the romantic qualities of Heathcliff and Byron with the ruthlessness of Macbeth

Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in the city of Nantes, France . He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days. Verne is often referred to as the 'Father of science fiction' because he wrote about space, air and underwater travel before aeroplanes, spacecrafts and submarines were invented. He died in 1905.

An adventure classic of deep-sea volcanoes, giant squid and the renegade scientist Captain Nemo. 
 
Professor Aronnax embarks on an expedition to hunt down and destroy a menacing sea monster. However, he discovers that the beast is metal - it is a giant submarine called the Nautilus built by the renegade scientist Captain Nemo. So begins an underwater adventure that takes them from the South Pole to the submerged lost city of Atlantis.

Jules Verne's wild and riotous fantasy Journey to the Centre of the Earth delves into the hidden mysteries of a vast, uncharted subterranean world. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the French by Frank Wynne with an introduction by Jane Smiley and notes by Peter Cogman. 
 
Jules Verne's pioneering science fiction classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. A cipher written in runes, it tells of an entrance to another world - a world hidden beneath our own, illuminated by an electrified gas and populated by strange, prehistoric beings. So with his nephew reluctantly in tow, the Professor follows this cryptic clue down into a dormant volcano in Iceland, and the further they descend, the more extraordinary the discoveries and creatures that they encounter, the greater the dangers, and the more ancient the living past that surrounds them. 
 
This new translation by Frank Wynne is accompanied by an introduction on the science of Verne's work and its influences. This edition also includes notes, a chronology and suggested further reading. 
 
Jules Verne (1828-1905), the 'father of Science Fiction' was born in Nantes, developing from early childhood a romantic fascination for the ships and the sea. In 1848 he moved to Paris, ostensibly to become a lawyer, though his true ambition was to become a writer. His first book, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) was an immediate popular success, followed a year later by Journey to the Centre of the Earth; among the most popular of the fifty-four books published during his life are From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). 
 
If you enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth you might like H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, also available in Penguin Classics.

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was a French author and a pioneer of the science-fiction genre. His novels include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). 
 
Frank Wynne has been a literary translator for more than a decade and has translated works by, among others, Michel Houellebecq, Ahmadou Kourouma, Petr Král and Almudena Grandes. He won the 2008 Scott Moncrieff Prize for his translation of Frédéric Beigbeder's Love Lasts Three Years, the 2005 Independent Fiction Prize for Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World and the 2002 IMPAC prize for Atomised his translation of Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires. 
 
Jane Smiley is the author of many novels, including Horse Heaven, The Greenlanders, A Thousand Acres, and Ten Days in the Hills, as well as a guide to the Novel, entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and been short-listed for the Orange Prize. She lives in California. 
 
Peter Cogman won a Scholarship to read Modern and Medieval Languages at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he subsequently gained a Ph.D. for research on the work of the 1900s poet and novelist P.-J. Toulet. He taught French at the University of Southampton, and is the author of Narration in Nineteenth-Century French Short Fiction: Prosper Mérimée to Marcel Schwob (2002).

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is an 1864 science-fiction novel by Jules Verne (published in the original French as Voyage au centre de la Terre). The story involves a professor who leads his nephew and hired guide down a volcano in Iceland to the 'centre of the Earth'. They are involved in many adventures, encountering prehistoric animals and natural hazards, and eventually come to the surface again in southern Italy. Verne's own belief, expressed in the novel as the viewpoint of a character, is that the inside of the Earth does in fact differ from that which the characters encounter.

In 1863, Jules Verne (1828-1905) published Five Weeks in a Balloon, and struck a new vein in fiction - stories that combined popular science and exploration.  He wrote 54 novels in the Extraordinary Voyages series.

French naturalist Professor Aronnax has joined a task force to rid the seas of a monster that is terrorizing shipping lanes. But the Professor&rsquo;s mission takes an unexpected turn when he falls overboard &ndash; to be rescued by a submarine called Nautilus, built by the mysterious Captain Nemo. At first this new journey is exciting, as Nemo takes Aronnax on an adventure through underwater marvels, but soon he realizes that his host&rsquo;s motives may be more sinister than he realized. This triumphant work of the imagination shows the limitless possibilities of science and the dark depths of the human mind.

Jules Verne

Rediscover the Puffin Classics collection and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this epic edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 
 
A mission to rid the seas of a monstrous creature becomes a terrifying nightmare when Professor Aronnax, Conseil and Ned Land are thrown overboard. The huge marine animal which has haunted the water is no living beast, but a spectacular manufactured vessel, and the three men find themselves the helpless prisoners of Captain Nemo. Resigned to their fate, they begin a miraculous journey on the submarine ship which can travel through waters never before explored. For the Professor, at least, this voyage is one he would not have missed for the world.

Jules Verne

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Must-read sci-fi classics

9 books for fans of pirate stories

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