The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne is an amazing book. I think it is one of Verne's best novels. It starts with 5 prisoners of war and a dog escaping from Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War. Their names are Cyrus Harding, an engineer, his servant Neb, a sailor named Pencroft, his apprentice Herbert, the journalist Gideon Spilett, and Harding's dog Top. They escape by stealing a balloon and floating to the clouds during a hurricane. After flying in the storm or several days, they crash on a deserted island in the Pacific, and they lose Harding and Top when they fell out of the balloon. The four others search for them and mysteriously find them still living after some days have passed. The six survive on the island using Harding's incredible knowledge to make fire, iron, pottery, nitroglycerin, bricks, a telegraph, a house in a cliff, and even a sailing ship. They even find their latitude a longitude. They name the island, Lincoln Island after their president and intend to colonize the island. While they prosper, many unexplainable events arise from Harding's rescue to finding a dead pig with a bullet in it. They find a message in a bottle and bring their ship to an island where they find a wild man named Ayrton so he joins them in returning to Lincoln Island. After a fight with pirates, they find out that the island is Captain Nemo's harbour for his ship, the Nautilus. It was Captain Nemo  who was responsible for all the strange events that happened to the men. Nemo tells his life story and then dies. They then scuttle the Nautilus and use it as Nemo's tomb. The island explodes in a volcanic eruption and everybody ends up on the one boulder still above sea level after the eruption. They are rescued by a ship which was coming to find Ayrton after it was informed by Nemo to come to the island. An amazing book everywhere, 4.5 out of 5.