Around the World in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne (Pierre-Jules Hetzel, 1873); audiobook read by David Colacci (Brilliance, 1994)
The narrative is patchy—some sections are filler, more stultifying travelogue than adventure—yet overall there emerges a genuine build-up of tension, culminating in a splendid denouement (albeit that Verne takes up Phileas Fogg’s woodenness and has a cringeworthy stab at romance).