The War of the Worlds (Books 1 & 2)

The War of the Worlds, written in 1898, is one of the best-known of the works by H. G. Wells, largely because of a radio dramatization of it in 1938 which caused widespread panic in the U.S.

The book is divided into two parts, Book one: The Coming of the Martians, and Book two: The Earth under the Martians.

The book deals with the narrator who is trying to reunite with his wife in London while, at the same time, the earth being invaded by Martians. Part one also features the tale of his brother, who accompanies two women to the coast in the hope of escaping England as it is invaded. An excerpt follows:

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." (from War of the Worlds)

* The book is now in the Public Domain