The Lost World (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was both a doctor and a believer in spirits, which may partly explain why his Sherlock Holmes is one of literature's most beloved detectives: Holmes always approaches his cases with the gentility and logic of a scientist, but the stories are suffused with an aura of the supernatural. Narrated by devoted assistant Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes's adventures were so addictive that fans protested the master deducer's "death" in 1893 and Doyle had to resurrect him.

Professor Challenger's claims of dinosaurs living in twentieth-century South America may seem outlandish, but even skeptics become believers in The Lost World (1912). Part adventure story, part science fiction, The Lost World generates motifs and characters that have such long-lasting popular appeal that they constantly reappear in today's fiction, film, and television.

About the Author:
Born in Edinburgh in 1859, he was raised by a mother who early on taught him to value his family's history and the actions of heroic men. During his pre-teen years in Jesuit school, Doyle was already an avid reader and storyteller. He published his first fiction in magazines while attending medical school at Edinburgh University. His writing includes seven full-length historical novels, numerous adventure stories and tales of terror, several works of science fiction, a few pamphlets and books on wars and the military, and, late in his life, both fiction and nonfiction focusing on Spiritualism.