In its simplest form, the adventure genre is all about a protagonist going from relative safety to an epic and dangerous journey, then finally back again into safety. These are stories of triumph over seemingly impossible odds.
We’ve put together a list of adventure books, including both fiction and nonfiction tales, that will inspire you to broaden your horizons and approach life with a more adventurous frame of mind.
Fictional Adventure Books
From pirates, to space explorers, and even space pirates, these books and their bold protagonists are sure to give your imagination a thrill.
1. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
What’s a better reason to set out on an adventure than buried treasure? Jim Hawkins is an ordinary innkeeper’s boy suddenly thrust into the pirate world when a mysterious old man leaves behind a treasure map. What follows is a quest filled with camaraderie, sword fights, and gold (lots of it!)—all the delights of a proper adventure.
From peg legs to black spots, and x marks the spot, this is the book that inspired the pirate that’s so engrained in our collective consciousness. This is the quintessential pirate adventure tale.
2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
“Call me Ishmael.”
The sea has always been a perilous force filled with unknown terrors. Sailor Ishmael chronicles Captain Ahab’s revenge-fueled search for the titular albino sperm whale that took off his leg. Their voyage lead them thorugh increasing perils until Ahab’s singular obsession costs them more than their ship.
Melville’s novel is about more than just a voyage doomed to fail—it’s about the human spirit’s urge to overcome an almost primal force of nature.
3. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
“True wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”
Three Englishmen set off in search of a lost man and a legendary diamond mine in Africa, with only a dubious map drawn in blood as a guide. What should have been a straightforward expedition turns into a nightmare when they discover a lost kingdom and get entangled in a civil war.
If you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, then you owe this book a read, as it serves as a direct inspiration for the dashing, whip-wielding adventurer.
4. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
“All for one and one for all.”
D’Artagnan leaves home to join the Musketeers, an elite military force. Though he fails to join immediately, he is befriended by three of the best musketeers in the company—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Together they defend the honor of the company against the guards of Cardinal Richelieu, the constantly scheming enemy of the Queen.
From the nonchalant sword fighting to the flamboyant dresses, almost everything you know about the swashbuckling hero is because of this book alone.
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
“Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”
Piscine Patel is on his way to America with his family when their ship sinks. He manages to get on a life boat, along with hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Bengal tiger he names Richard Parker. The tiger soon dispatches everyone but Pi, who manages to coexist with the tiger for 277 days.
This book lends a youth’s perspective to survival, layering innocent thoughts into a mature narrative.
6. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
“I see that it is by no means useless to travel, if a man wants to see something new.”
Phineas Fogg is a rich gentleman with a habit of doing things to mathematical precision. A news article proclaiming that people can now travel the world in 80 days leads to a wager between Fogg and members of his Reform Club: half of his fortune if he can’t prove the article to be true. Together with his valet, he embarks on a journey to prove himself correct.
A different flavor to Verne’s writings, this book offers a fairly straightforward story but is nonetheless as entertaining as his other works.
7. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
“There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.”
David Balfour, whose parents recently died, is directed to his paranoid uncle’s estate. Learning that he may be the rightful owner of the estate, he confronts his uncle—who tricks him into getting into a ship and taken out to sea. What follows is a dizzying journey through Scotland, where tensions are high and a power struggle is currently ongoing.
To say “adventure ensues” is an understatement in this book, with the protagonist getting thrown into increasingly dangerous situations he can’t possibly survive alone.
8. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
“I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, all the rest of the ship’s company being drowned. In despair of any relief, I saw nothing but death before me…”
Crusoe’s desire for the sea finds him shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. With no rescue to look forward to, he does his best to survive. For 28 years he lives on the island, encountering cannibals, slaves, and mutineers before finally being rescued.
Viewed as the first realistic fiction, Defoe chronicles a man’s loneliness and desperation as he learns to survive in a place far away from any kind of civilization.
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
Huckleberry, having come into some money from his previous adventures, is placed under guardianship of Widow Douglas. He finds civilized life too confining however, and slips away with help from his best friend Tom. He, along with runaway slave Jim, embark on an adventure along the Mississippi, encountering bandits, slave traders, and more dangers than they thought.
Mark Twain’s use of witty banter and a view point through the eyes of kids make for a simple and enjoyable read that lasts ages.
10. Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine.”
A family is marooned somewhere in Africa. Soon after, the parents die, leaving their toddler son to the mercies of the jungle. Fortunately, he is adopted and raised by apes, and he soon rises as their king. As he rediscovers his human heritage, Tarzan must now prove himself not only to the animals of the jungle, but to the scarier humans as well.
Immortalized by the Disney adaptation, Burrough’s novel is a more somber read that depicts the dangers of an untamed land, and the result of being isolated from one’s own species.
Nonfiction Adventure Books
There are plenty of real-life explorers and adventurers to draw inspiration from. Many of them have left accounts of their own experiences and hardships. If you prefer nonfictional adventure reads, then the books listed below are perfect for you.
1. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
“Hey, Guys! This is the last communication you shall receive from me. I now walk out to live amongst the wild. Take care, it was great knowing you.”
After graduating in 1990, Christopher Johnson McCandless gave away almost all that he had and left home. Two years later, he headed into the Alaskan wilderness, where his body was found 113 days later. Krakauer pieces together the why’s and how’s of McCandless’ way of living in this dizzyingly incredible read.
2. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”
Robert Falcon Scott wished to be the first man in the world to reach the south pole. In 1910, he headed the Terra Nova expedition to try and do just that. Apsley Cherry-Garrard is the youngest member of the crew and one of the few to survive the ill-fated expedition. His accounting of sub-zero conditions and the subsequent tragedy is a sobering warning to the dangers of exploration.
3. Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.”
The author-aviator left more than the Little Prince as his legacy. His memoir is its own little tale of the early days of aviation. Back then, airplanes looked little more than faulty contraptions, and crashes were frequent. But despite the frequent dangers, de Saint-Exupéry frequently talks of the grandeur of being in a place where few people have ever been before—the sky.
4. In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
“Hope was all that stood between them and death.”
In 1820, the whaleship Essex was sunk by an angry sperm whale. The twenty-man crew was thousands of miles away from safety. With little food and water, the survivors took to cannibalism in order to survive. The book is a retelling of the tragedy that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
5. The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara
“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”
Che Guevara is well known as the face of the revolutionary spirit. But before the Cuban revolution, he was your run-of-the-mill medical student. For nine months, he explored South America and witnessed the social injustices, ostracization, and exploitation that transformed him into the person he is known today. This is his coming-of-age story.
6. A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
“Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.”
Bourdain had always loved traveling and food, and this book is the passion project that propelled him into the limelight. Throwing caution to the wind, he explores numerous countries and cultures in search of the perfect meal.
7. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
With a desire to understand his country on a deeper level, John Steinbeck embarks on a journey with his poodle named Charley. Visiting more than 40 states, this book contains Steinbeck’s ruminations of America and what his beloved country stood for.
8. Pyongyang by Guy Delisle
“At a certain level of oppression, truth hardly matters, because the greater the lie, the greater the show of power.”
Guy Delisle had the opportunity to live in North Korea for two months. His book relates all the oddities and practices he observed during that time. From the odd absence of the elderly and disabled, to the use of music propaganda, this book takes a brief look at what life is like inside the country.
9. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
“Life can deal you an amazing hand. Do you play it steady, bluff like crazy, or go all in?”
Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were both young mountaineers eager to conquer the Peruvian Andes. They make it to the summit but disaster strikes on the way down. Simpson breaks his leg and gets stuck on a crevice. This his first-hand account of what happened during their disastrous climb.
10. Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
“What’s the use of lying down to die as long as we can stand up and walk.”
In 1815, Captain James Riley and his crew are shipwrecked off the coast of Africa. They find themselves captured and sold into slavery, and forced to march through the hellish heat of the Sahara desert. This is their story of encountering barbarism, dehydration, death, and starvation in a region barely explored by the Western world.
Finding Adventure in Books
People are naturally attracted to adventures, perhaps because our curiosity sometimes just gets the better of us when it comes to the unknown and the mysterious. We just have to experience them.
That curiosity fuels the imagination, letting us conjure different experiences that find their way into our books. Whether they’re factual or fictional events, these books are what we look for when our wanderlust acts up.
If you’re frequently hungry for adventure, try a few of the books listed in this article. They might just be the ones to inspire you to do your own adventure.
Do you have any favorite adventure books? Share them on the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
