The Count of Monte Cristo

Edmond Dantès has everything a young man could want: a ship to captain, a girl to marry, a future bright as the Marseille harbour at dawn. Then, at his own betrothal feast, four men who envy him put their names to a lie, and he vanishes into the Château d'If, the island fortress from which no prisoner returns. What he finds there, whispered through stone by a dying priest, is a fortune beyond counting and the name of every man who buried him alive. The rest is the most patient revenge ever written: a stranger of impossible wealth arriving in Paris years on, gracious, smiling, holding every thread in his gloved hand. Dumas built it as pure thrill, and it thrills, but beneath runs a darker question, whether any ransom can buy back a stolen life, and where a wronged man stops being the hand of Providence and starts playing God. Wait and hope, the novel says at its close. By then you will know the cost of both.