The Invisible Man

A stranger swathed in bandages, dark goggles, and a wide-brimmed hat arrives at an inn in the quiet English village of Iping, demanding to be left alone with his mysterious apparatus. He is Griffin, a brilliant and embittered scientist who has discovered how to make a living body invisible — and has made himself the first subject of his own experiment. But invisibility, he finds, is a curse as much as a power: he cannot reverse it, he cannot be seen to eat or sleep, and the isolation and impunity it grants him steadily unhinge his mind.

As suspicion in Iping turns to panic and violence, Griffin flees across the countryside, growing more desperate and more dangerous. Seeking an ally in a former acquaintance, Dr. Kemp, he reveals a chilling plan to use his invisibility to launch a "Reign of Terror" — and the hunt to stop him begins.

First published in 1897, H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man is a foundational work of science fiction and a taut psychological thriller. Subtitled "A Grotesque Romance," it is both a gripping chase and a dark parable about genius unmoored from conscience, and the corrupting temptation of power without accountability.