100 great adventure novels, from Jules Verne to Tom Clancy, each paired with the film adaptation it inspired where one exists.
Great adventure fiction has always been Hollywood's favorite raw material. From Verne's voyages and Stevenson's pirates to Clancy's submarines and Crichton's dinosaurs, the books on this list didn't just thrill readers — most of them went on to become movies, and in a few cases the movies became more famous than the books.
This is the complete list: 100 adventure novels in alphabetical order, and wherever a title made it to the screen, we've paired it with the film adaptation, its release year, and its director. Read the book first, then see how the movie stacks up — or use the pairings to work backward from a favorite film to the story that started it.
Most lists of all-time greats include Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick, The Three Musketeers, and Jules Verne's voyages such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Modern classics like The Hobbit, Jurassic Park, and The Hunt for Red October have earned their place alongside them. All of these appear on the list above, most with the movie adaptation they inspired.
Several adaptations on this list are considered classics in their own right: Jaws-era Spielberg turned Jurassic Park into a landmark blockbuster, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy swept the Oscars, and Master and Commander is often called the best age-of-sail film ever made. Older gems include Michael Curtiz's Captain Blood and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.
Usually, yes — the book almost always contains more detail, backstory, and character development than the film can fit. That said, some adaptations diverge so much (The 13th Warrior versus Eaters of the Dead, John Carter versus A Princess of Mars) that you can enjoy each on its own terms. Our pairings make it easy to do both.
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