New Releases by Jules Verne

"Master of the World", published in 1904, is one of the last novels by French pioneer science fiction writer, Jules Verne, and is a sequel to "Robur the Conqueror". At the time Verne wrote the novel, his health was failing, and Master of the World is a "black novel," filled with the fear of the coming of tyrants like the novel''s villain, Robur, and totalitarianism.

The book tells the adventures of five American prisoners of war on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. Begining in the American Civil War, as famine and death ravage the city of Richmond, Virginia, five northern POWs decide to escape in a rather unusual way - by hijacking a balloon! This is only the beginning of their adventures...

Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (French: Cinq semaines en ballon) is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1863. It is the first novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader''s interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets. Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel''s publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" is a classic 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne. The story involves ger professor Otto Lidenbrock who believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the centre of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans descend into an Icelandic volcano, encountering many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, before eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy, at the volcano ''Stromboli''.

Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8th, 1828 on Ile Feydeau, a small artificial island on the Loire River in Nantes. His father wanted his son to take over the family law practice. Jules started along this course and despite graduating with a licence en droit in January 1851 was soon diverted by the lure of literature and by his own ambitious talents in this direction. He wrote for the theatre and for magazines and soon with the publication of his first novel; Five Weeks in a Balloon on January 31st, 1863 he had begun his career as an admired and popular author. For many, many years the works flowed, usually no less than and often more than two volumes per year. His meticulous research and imaginative setting and narratives soon established him as a top selling author and he became both famous and wealthy. By publishing firstly as a serialised book and then as a complete book sales swelled as did his reputation. His earnings increased further due to the runaway success from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), Strangely he was overlooked for honours. He was not even nominated for membership of the Academie Francaise. After the death of both his mother and Hetzel, Jules began to publish darker works but still at a prodigious rate. In 1888, Jules entered politics and was elected town councillor of Amiens, and then served for fifteen years. Jules was now entering the last period of his life. His works continued to flow albeit at a slower pace. His reconciled with his son, Michel who now became an active contributor to his father''s works and, when the senior Verne died, would continue to contribute and publish his father''s works, ensuring that the work was kept in the public eye and the legacy preserved. On March 24th, 1905, while ill with diabetes, Jules Verne died at his home at 44 Boulevard Longueville, Amiens. As a legacy Jules Verne is forever remembered as ''The Father of Science Fiction''. With his rigorous research Jules was not only able to make his works realistic but also to project forward and predict many new things that would eventually come to pass - either in real life or as the basis for others to use in their own science fiction. Extraordinary indeed."

Originally published in French in 1867, Michael Strogoff, or, the Courier of the Czar, is regarded as one of Jules Verne’s greatest novels. This intriguing tale set in Russia tells the story of one man, Michael Strogoff, the Czar’s courier, who is set out on an impossible mission to save his country. A traitor inspires the dangerous Feofar Khan to invade Siberia and form a rebellion, leading to a plot to kill the czar’s brother, the Grand Duke. As a result, Strogoff is sent out to warn the Duke, serving as the nation’s last hope to cease the rebellion. Along the way he meets new people, makes new friends and gets capture by the enemy, only to make a grand escape. Readers are sure to be at the edge of their seats as they follow the courier’s adventures through Siberia. Though this book is not one of the many science-fiction books that Verne is so highly regarded for, it utilizes the scientific phenomenon as a major plot device, allowing readers to nevertheless enjoy his profound literary voice and follow the protagonist on an unforgettable adventure. "Jules Verne''s imagination has given us some of the greatest adventure stories of all time" —Daily Mail “The reason Verne is still read by millions today is simply that he was one of the best storytellers who ever lived.”—Arthur C. Clarke “This edition of what symbolically and psychoanalytically must be his richest text will, however, do much to encourage a more just appreciation…”—The Modern Language Review on Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Jules Verne has written, and Virginia Champlin translated, The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, which is, as a matter of course, highly amusing and absurd. The scenes are laid in a country not often chosen in fiction, and the plan is as novel as it is preposterous. Nobody but this extravagant and irresponsible author would have been likely to have executed such a piece of work. To give the plot would be to spoil it: enough to say that the hero, Kin-fo, who is young, rich, handsome, and about to be married, is also tired of living, and after insuring his life for a hundred years at an immense sum, covering all risks, even of suicide, decides to kill himself that his betrothed and his friend Wang may have the money, but changing his mind agrees with the latter on assassination. Afterwards concluding that he will live, he hunts China over in search of Wang, who has disappeared, two of the company''s agents going with him. Their adventures, in which a phonograph and Paul Boyton''s armor have an important part, are the wildest conceivable, but all ends well, and Kin-fo, turned philosopher after his vicissitudes, sees that only those who know "how to appreciate life " are fit to live. Jules Verne has evidently "read up" China to good purpose, for there is a great amount of information, down to minute points of etiquette and ways of living, and the descriptions of Chinese matters, geographical, political, and social, are accurate and interesting.

Around the Moon (French: Autour de la Lune, 1870), Jules Verne''s sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, is a science fiction novel continuing the trip to the moon which left the reader in suspense after the previous novel. It was later combined with From the Earth to the Moon to create A Trip to the Moon and Around It. The three travelers undergo a series of adventures and misadventures during the rest of the journey, including disposing of the body of a dog out a window, suffering intoxication by gases, and making calculations leading them, briefly, to believe that they are to fall back to Earth. During the latter part of the voyage, it becomes apparent that the gravitational force of their earlier encounter with the asteroid has caused the projectile to deviate from its course. The projectile enters lunar orbit, rather than landing on the moon as originally planned. Barbicane, Ardan and Nicholl begin geographical observations with opera glasses. The projectile then dips over the northern hemisphere of the moon, into the darkness of its shadow. It is plunged into extreme cold, before emerging into the light and heat again. They then begin to approach the moon''s southern hemisphere. From the safety of their projectile, they gain spectacular views of Tycho, one of the greatest of all craters on the moon. The three men discuss the possibility of life on the moon, and conclude that it is barren. The projectile begins to move away from the moon, towards the ''dead point'' (the place at which the gravitational attraction of the moon and Earth becomes equal). Michel Ardan hits upon the idea of using the rockets fixed to the bottom of the projectile (which they were originally going to use to deaden the shock of landing) to propel the projectile towards the moon and hopefully cause it to fall onto it, thereby achieving their mission.

Verne''s first cautionary tale about the dangers of science — first modern and corrected English translation. When two European scientists unexpectedly inherit an Indian rajah''s fortune, each builds an experimental city of his dreams in the wilds of the American Northwest. France-Ville is a harmonious urban community devoted to health and hygiene, the specialty of its French founder, Dr. François Sarrasin. Stahlstadt, or City of Steel, is a fortress-like factory town devoted to the manufacture of high-tech weapons of war. Its German creator, the fanatically pro-Aryan Herr Schultze, is Verne''s first truly evil scientist. In his quest for world domination and racial supremacy, Schultze decides to showcase his deadly wares by destroying France-Ville and all its inhabitants. Both prescient and cautionary, The Begum''s Millions is a masterpiece of scientific and political speculation and constitutes one of the earliest technological utopia/dystopias in Western literature. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices, and a critical introduction as well as all the illustrations from the original French edition.

The Golden Volcano thrusts two Canadian cousins unexpectedly bequeathed a mining claim in the Klondike into the middle of the gold rush, where they encounter disease, disaster, extremes of weather, and human nature twisted by a passion for gold. A deathbed confidence sends the two searching for a fabulous gold-filled volcano on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. But nature, both human and physical, hasn t finished with them, and their story plays out with the nail-biting adventure of an action thriller and the moral and emotional force of high drama. Like many of the works left unpublished when Jules Verne died, The Golden Volcano was altered and edited by his son, Michel. This first translation from the original manuscript allows readers of English to rediscover the pleasures of Verne s storytelling in its original form and to enjoy a virtually unknown gem of action, adventure, and style from a master of French literature.

Jules Verne’s extraordinary crime drama—now in English

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne PART ONE CHAPTER I A SHIFTING REEF The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter. For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing," a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale. The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times-- rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length--we might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all. And that it DID exist was an undeniable fact; and, with that tendency which disposes the human mind in favour of the marvellous, we can understand the excitement produced in the entire world by this supernatural apparition. As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question. On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, had met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown sandbank; he even prepared to determine its exact position when two columns of water, projected by the mysterious object, shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up into the air. Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw up from its blow-holes columns of water mixed with air and vapour. Similar facts were observed on the 23rd of July in the same year, in the Pacific Ocean, by the Columbus, of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company. But this extraordinary creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity; as, in an interval of three days, the Governor Higginson and the Columbus had observed it at two different points of the chart, separated by a distance of more than seven hundred nautical leagues.

Written in 1898, and part of Jules Verne''s famous series "Voyages Extraordinaires, " this fantastic tale a young man''s search for his father along Venezuela''s then-uncharted Orinoco River contains all the ingredients of a classic Verne scientific-adventure storyQas well as a unique feminist twist.

Englishman Phileas Fogg races around the world on a daring wager in the seemingly impossible time of eighty days.

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne''s masterpiece. "Wide-eyed mid-nineteenth-century humanistic optimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump" (Kirkus Reviews), here is the enthralling tale of five men and a dog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island of bewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive as they uncover the island''s secret.