This Collider article rounds up ten classic adventure novels the author argues rival any film for excitement, spanning genres from piracy to Westerns to Arctic survival. The piece frames adventure fiction as a genre with roots stretching back to 18th- and 19th-century novelists who built on myth and legend, arguing these foundational works still hold up against modern cinema in terms of pace, character and stakes.

Among the titles discussed are Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" (1903), a survival tale following a stolen sled dog rediscovering his primal instincts in the Yukon; Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" (1883), centred on Jim Hawkins, a treasure map and the morally ambiguous pirate Long John Silver; and H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines" (1885), credited with founding the "lost world" subgenre through Allan Quatermain's African expedition. The list also promises to cover works ranging in tone up to Larry McMurtry's Western epic "Lonesome Dove", though only the top entries were detailed in the extracted text.

– Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" (1903) tops a raw Yukon survival tale
– Stevenson's "Treasure Island" (1883) remains the archetypal pirate adventure
– Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines" (1885) pioneered the "lost world" subgenre