Kidnapped

In 1751, after his father's death, seventeen-year-old David Balfour walks to the house of his uncle Ebenezer to claim his inheritance. The miserly uncle tries to kill him on a broken staircase, then has him kidnapped onto a ship bound for slavery in the Carolinas. On board David meets Alan Breck Stewart, a proud, vain and brave Highlander loyal to the defeated Jacobites, and the two end up fleeing across the Scottish Highlands, suspected of a real political murder.

Published in 1886, the same year as Jekyll and Hyde, Kidnapped is a perfect adventure novel and a moving story of friendship between two very different men. Readers who enjoyed Treasure Island will find Stevenson here at the height of his powers.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) came from a family of Edinburgh lighthouse engineers and was expected to follow them, but chose writing, despite lungs so weak he was often bedridden. He travelled constantly in search of health, married the American Fanny Osbourne and wrote Treasure Island for her son.

Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses followed, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. He died there at forty-four and is buried on a hilltop above his home.