The String of Pearls: The Barber of Fleet Street

A London couple takes in a quiet lodger just as a killer called The Avenger begins murdering women nearby. Inspired by Jack the Ripper, this 1913 novel is all suspicion and suspense, and Hitchcock adapted it.

Marie Belloc Lowndes

A bandaged stranger arrives at a village inn, and soon a man nobody can see is terrorizing the countryside. Wells's 1897 novel becomes a manhunt where the hunted is impossible to catch.

H. G. Wells

Shipwrecked on a remote island, a big-game hunter discovers that his host hunts a far more dangerous prey: people. The 1924 story behind countless survival thrillers, and it reads in one breathless sitting.

Richard Connell

A castaway lands on an island where a banished scientist turns animals into something close to human. Wells's 1896 novel is a desperate fight to survive among creatures that are starting to forget their rules.

H. G. Wells

Shadowy figures climb aboard a sailing ship at night, and the crew starts disappearing one by one. Hodgson's 1909 novel is a tight, relentless story of men trapped at sea with something they cannot fight.

William Hope Hodgson