What Adventure Books would you recommend?

Personally, I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard- he writes some wonderful fight scenes- a particular favorite of mine are his Solomon Kane stories, in which the titular character roams around Europe & Africa and slays various evildoers and monsters and suchlike. Very fun!

I\m kind of old fashioned. I would recommend Captain Blood (awesome pirate adventures, made into a middling film in the Golden Days of Hollywood), the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Count of Monte Cristo. I also liked the Prisoner of Zenda.

Bring on the swashbuckling!

Counte of Monte Cristo for sure. Also by Dumas - and some of my favorite novels - are the D'artagnon romances (romance as in adventure): The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

I always enjoyed the Amber Series - The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. I'm sure one of the genres it could be classified as is Adventure. 10 books in all, the first 5 deal with Corwin as the main character, the next 5 deal with his son's quest. The first book in the series is called "9 Princes in Amber". Cunning, ruthless and flawed characters, fantasy elements, magic, reality . . . loads of interesting plot and character twists. Certainly worth reading.

Oh yeah :D

In addition to Captain Blood, there's also Captain Blood Returns and The Fortunes of Captain Blood. (You can never really get enough Captain Blood.) And then there's Scaramouche and The Sea Hawk and....

I'm a classic person :) I reccomend Treasure Island, my favorite story. Most people don't like the book because it's hard to read but the reading was easy for me. Plus, it has a bit of comedy.

I would suggest books by R. A. Salvatore. His books may be more qualified for the Fantasy section, but his characters have some amazing adventures. I couldn't put the books down until I got to one of the more recent ones - now I don't have time to read, unfortunately. Good luck with your novel!

Prisoner of Zenda is a work of genius! Love it. The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy is a really good read too (and brief by Tolstoyian standards) Also Master of Ballantrae - amazing scope and Stevenson is brilliant! Glad so many people have said good things about Rafael Sabatini, he's on my "to read" list! :)

The Prisoner of Zenda deserves its reputation as the finest adventure book of all time; I also enjoyed its (quite different) sequel, Rupert of Hentzau.

ANYTHING by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is gonna rock. (With me: "We're not worthy, we're not worthy, we're not worthy....").

Talbot Mundy's Om -- the Secret of Arbor Valley was my first classic Victorian-style adventure, and it's terrific.

The Jungle Books (Kipling, of course) should get a mention.

I've liked the Sabatini stuff I've read, but IMHO it doesn't come within coo-ee of Zenda.

H. Rider Haggard also rocks, and is way weird along with it.

Oh, gosh, the list could go on and on....

-- Laura, adventure-novel junkie

Matthew Reilly novels are an easy read and very very fast paced, great action scenes.
Chris Ryan and Ian Fleming are also very good

I definitely second the Treasure Island recommendation. Really, it's an awesome book.

I would like to recommend a new heroine to those mentioned above, Emily Pollifax. For those of you who doubt:

1. They take place in exotic locals
2. She ALWAYS finds a key person or piece of information to elimante and world, or at the least at diplomatic, issue.
3. The books count on some unbelieveable elemens of serendipity for sheer dumb luck.
4 and most of all THEY ARE GREAT FUN

It's a Teen Titan fan-fic. The author, Post, is the object of my envy. He is a writing God, and I say that in comparison to most famous authors as well. A little long winded at times, but in my opinion most other authors pale in comparison to Post.

Link to These Black Eyes

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1785483/1/These_Black_Eyes

Link to the Sequel - Manifest Destiny

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2497141/1/Manifest_Destiny

My all time favorite book- Watership Down, by Richard Adams. Yes, it's about rabbits, but IMHO, a perfectly executed epic of the hero's journey.

I feel the way you do. I'm 36 and I read a lot of Young Adult Literature. It's so much more fun to excape into worlds that are, well, just more fun!

:) Jen

If you like science fiction, read Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. Despite its name (which got me a few incredulous looks from librarians) they are light hearted and action packed. You've gotta love a book that starts out with the MC illustrating a pun with an explosive device! :-D

Dersu Usala

Anything by Jack London.

Anything by Hemingway.

Travellogues, like _In the Footsteps of Ghenghis Khan_

Other than that, try to find a well-read friend who is in his or her fourties. They'll remember the classic books (many of which are forgotten because they were too graphic) that kids would read then.

An example of that would be C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" series of nautical adventures.

http://www.amazon.com/Hornblower-Beat-Quarters-C-S-Forester/dp/031628932...

(You might remember "The African Queen.")

F

For pure adventure storytelling, I'd recommend Alistair MacLean, especially some of his earlier work: HMS Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Night Without End, Bear Island, and The Black Shrike are some of my favorites. In later years, I got the impression that he was just going through the motions, but the ones I've mentioned, I liked very much.

It's not brilliant technical stuff--MacLean himself always said that he was a storyteller, not a novelist--but he was a very good storyteller indeed.

"A Series Of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket

"The Funhouse" by Dean Koontz

Those are my favorites so far.

-----

Bitch. Please.

Greetings

I like Louis L'Amour a great deal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_L'Amour

Mostly he's about cowboy stories but his "Walking Drum" is a meieval adventure and "Last of the Breed" is a modern survival story with "Haunted Mesa" being SciFi and I have a collection of his shirt stories "Yondering" (memory) that is sort of detective stories of pre-WW2.

He's an interesting writer to study, tells a good story with venacular dialogue, well drawn charcters, and punchy plot...

Well worth the read

Enjoy the journey

Warlord

"The RowanTree" - a novel of fantasy and stream, say it with me: "Steampunk dwarves"

Read WarLord's NaNoWriMo BLOG http://warlordsnano.blogspot.com/

I hated The Three Muskateers!!! I like classics and I like adventure, but I just couldn't stand this book becaus there was so little action and so much romance.

You can't skip The Sillmarillion by Tolkien

Stevensen and Dumas, for sure. I never got through any of the other D'Artagnan pieces, they always made me cry, but the original Musketeers is my all-time favourite. Kidnapped by Stevensen (the same fellow who wrote Treasure Island) is also amazing, but doesn't get a whole lot of attention for some reason.

I have to say that I really liked Kidnapped. I have this copy that was my Dad's, and I found it a couple of years ago, read it, loved it. I got to go to the Highlands a while back, and it is soo awesome to reread that book and know that I"ve been all those places!

R.A. Salvatore is brilliant, so is Terry Pratchett. You might try The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks... um... my sisters swear by the Star Wars books, multiple authors involved there... Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials are good.