The Island of Doctor Moreau

A shipwreck in the South Seas, a palmy paradise where a mad doctor conducts vile experiments, animals that become human & then "beastly" in ways they never were before - -it's the stuff of high adventure. It's also a parable about Darwinian theory, a social satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels & a bloody tale of horror. 

As Wells himself wrote: "The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now & then, tho I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, & I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation." 

This colorful tale by the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man & The War of the Worlds lit a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication in 1896.