Prehistoric Fiction
Explore the best prehistoric fiction books with our curated list! Dive into thrilling tales of ancient civilizations, dinosaurs, and early humans in these top-rated novels.
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Before Adam. Children of the Frost.
by Jack London
Author of more than fifty books, Jack London, born in San Francisco, grew up across the bay in Oakland. Variously a tramp, a fisherman, a longshoreman, and a sailor, London also worked as a gold prospector and a war correspondent. Among his influences are those of Social Darwinism, Nietzsche and Marx. Although his writings suggest a complexity of ideas, he is commonly categorized as a literary naturalist. His adventure stories of Alaska and the Pacific continue to fascinate new generations of readers.--- In Before Adam, the protagonist relives, in his dreams, the pre-stoneage life of one of his proto-human ancestors.--- Children of the Frost is a collection of stories set in the frozen wastes of the Yukon during the "Gold Rush."
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The Inheritors
by William Golding
A small tribe of Neanderthals find themselves at odds with a tribe comprised of homo sapiens, whose superior intelligence and agility threatens their doom.
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The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Ed Malone is persuaded to join the larger-than-life Professor George Edward Challenger on a scientific expedition in the depths of the Amazon. But as the expedition team plunges deeper into the forest, the danger mounts. Now it is up to Ed and the Professor to get out alive.
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The Clan of the Cave Bear
by Jean M. Auel
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by a woman of the Clan, people very different from her own kind. To them, blond, blue-eyed Ayla looks peculiar and ugly—she is one of the Others, those who have moved into their ancient homeland; but Iza cannot leave the girl to die and takes her with them. Iza and Creb, the old Mog-ur, grow to love her, and as Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza’s way of healing, most come to accept her. But the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader sees her differences as a threat to his authority. He develops a deep and abiding hatred for the strange girl of the Others who lives in their midst, and is determined to get his revenge.
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The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
by Robert E. Howard
Conan is one of the greatest fictional heroes ever created– a swordsman who cuts a swath across the lands of the Hyborian Age, facing powerful sorcerers, deadly creatures, and ruthless armies of thieves and reavers. “Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities . . . there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. . . . Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand . . . to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years before his tragic suicide, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. Collected in this volume, profusely illustrated by artist Mark Schultz, are Howard’s first thirteen Conan stories, appearing in their original versions–in some cases for the first time in more than seventy years–and in the order Howard wrote them. Along with classics of dark fantasy like “The Tower of the Elephant” and swashbuckling adventure like “Queen of the Black Coast,” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian contains a wealth of material never before published in the United States, including the first submitted draft of Conan’s debut, “Phoenix on the Sword,” Howard’s synopses for “The Scarlet Citadel” and “Black Colossus,” and a map of Conan’s world drawn by the author himself. Here are timeless tales featuring Conan the raw and dangerous youth, Conan the daring thief, Conan the swashbuckling pirate, and Conan the commander of armies. Here, too, is an unparalleled glimpse into the mind of a genius whose bold storytelling style has been imitated by many, yet equaled by none.
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Eaters of the Dead
by Michael Crichton
An ambassador of the tenth-century Caliph of Bagdad is carried off by the Norsemen to endure, for three years, the harshness of their way of life and the creatures that terrorize them.
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She
by H. Rider Haggard
On his twenty-fifth birthday, Leo Vincey opens the silver casket that his father has left to him. It contains a letter recounting the legend of a white sorceress who rules an African tribe and of his father�s quest to find this remote race. To find out for himself if the story is true, Leo and his companions set sail for Zanzibar. There, he is brought face to face with Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed: dictator, femme fatale, tyrant and beauty. She has been waiting for centuries for the true descendant of Kallikrates, her murdered lover, to arrive, and arrive he does � in an unexpected form. Blending breathtaking adventure with a brooding sense of mystery and menace, She is a story of romance, exploration discovery and heroism that has lost none of its power to enthrall.
