Remote, natural, beautiful, and sometimes frightening, this is the lure of the island. Whether you’re island bound on your next vacation or looking for your next great reading escape that takes place on a deserted, tropical, idyllic, or mysterious island, you’ll want to check out 15 of the best books set on islands.

1. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Ships, treasure maps, buried gold! Treasure Island remains a classic adventure novel that follows Bristol-born Jim Hawkins as he battles a villainous pirate, Long John Silver, for treasures on a secret island.

2. The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

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How many of us have fantasized about living in the epic treehouse built by the Robinson family after their ship en route to Port Jackson, Australia, goes off course and is shipwrecked in the East Indies?

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

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Twenty-eight years is a long time to live on a remote, desert island near the coasts of Venezuela, but that’s what happens to Robinson Crusoe. Originally penned by “Robinson Crusoe,” many assumed the book not a work of fiction but rather a travelogue of true events. First published in  1719, it is considered by many to be the first English novel.

4. The Comedians by Graham Greene

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Set in Haiti, Hispaniola, the novel follows an English hotelier named Brown during the rule of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoutes.

5. Drown by Junot Diaz

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Yunior tracks his family’s journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic (it shares an island with Haiti) to the tenements of New Jersey.

6. How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan

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Stella is a forty-two-year-old divorced, independent woman who decides to take an impromptu vacation to Jamaica. She finds sun, sea, laughter, fun, and an unexpected romance with a young, handsome Jamaican.

7. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

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From Key West, Florida, to Cuba, and back again many times, To Have and Have Not follows a fishing boat captain Harry Morgan who is forced to start running contraband between the two countries in order to keep his family afloat.

8. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

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Let’s head over to the Mediterranean. Set on the large island of Crete in Greece, Zorba the Greek follows a boisterous, older Greek man named Zorba and his young intellectual friend, the narrator. Hilarity, philosophical questions, and life lessons ensue.

9. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

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My Family and Other Animals documents the rare and magical childhood of Gerald Durrell on the island of Corfu in Greece.

10. The Magus by John Fowles

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Staying in Greece, the entirely fictional island of Phraxos hosts a young and narcissistic English teacher named Nicholas Urfe, who gets a lot more than he bargained for after he meets the island’s richest inhabitant, Mr. Conchis, and his two houseguests, a pair of mysterious, beautiful, and beguiling female twins.

11. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

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Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. The novel follows a group of shipwrecked boys on an uninhabited island and their disastrous (not to mention terrifying) attempt to govern themselves.

12. The Beach by Alex Garland

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Richard and two others traveling in Bangkok decide to risk it and travel to “The Beach,” a hidden (and forbidden) lagoon without the noise, clutter, and mess of tourists trap and, supposedly, a secret expat community living idyllic lives in a secret Eden.

13. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

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An island that no one wants to visit, Shutter Island is the home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane. The movie version stars Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in the film version of The Beach.

14. Hawaii by James A. Michener

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The 937-page novel tells the history of the Hawaiian Islands from the creation of the isles to the time they became an American state.

15. Ulysses by James Joyce

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Considered one of the most important works of modernist literature, Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom in Dublin, Ireland, in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.

Related: 10 Of The Best Literary Quotes About The Sea

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