Kidnapped.

Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of a young man cheated of his inheritance and thrown into the wild aftermath of the Jacobite cause remains one of the finest adventure stories in English.

What it's about

Kidnapped follows David Balfour, a newly orphaned youth who goes to claim his due from a miserly uncle and is instead betrayed, seized and carried off to sea. Shipwreck throws him together with Alan Breck Stewart, a proud and reckless Highland Jacobite, and the two become companions in a long, hazardous flight across the Scottish Highlands, pursued through heather and glen as David struggles to reclaim his name and his rights. The country itself, the misty hills and the perils of the road, becomes almost a character in the chase.

Themes

The book turns on friendship between opposites, the Lowland Whig boy and the fiery Highland loyalist, and on justice, courage and the finding of one's own manhood. It is set amid the tensions of a Scotland divided by clan, creed and politics after the failed risings, and it takes those divisions seriously even as it thrills.

Why it still matters

Stevenson wrote adventure that is also literature, spare, exact and morally alert, and Kidnapped has never lost its grip. It carries its history lightly while giving readers a headlong story and one of fiction's great friendships.

Who it's for

For readers young and old who love a chase, for anyone drawn to Scotland and its past, and for those who want adventure written with real craft.