Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne, 1873.
Phileas Fogg bets he can circle the world in eighty days and leaves London that night with his servant Passepartout. They use ships, trains, and an elephant. A detective follows them because he thinks Fogg is a bank robber. Verne loves timetables. The suspense is often a missed connection, not a monster. The book is a picture of the nineteenth-century transport network, and of an English gentleman who treats the schedule as a moral duty.
Public-domain text.