His fifth novel is another morality story involving a different mad scientist. Plot is simple: scientist develops an process to make himself invisible and uses it on himself, but can't reverse it. It has an interesting flash back narrative, where the scientist Griffin starts out invisible and covered in bandages and has to befriend someone after his invisibility is exposed to people in an inn and enlists the help of someone named Marvel. Griffin also finds a former colleague named Kemp and recounts his story to him, but he has already turned to a life of crime and terror at this point and Kemp becomes his main target.
Having the protagonist also be an somewhat interesting, but generally unsympathetic villain is an interesting take that not many authors have tried before. Partly the invisibility drove Griffin to his crimes since he could no longer live a normal life, but for the most part he seems like more of an arrogant jerk who was looking for an excuse to go bad. The fact that the invisibility is permanent is a interesting variation compared to most fictional invisibility that came later, which normally is easier to control in most later fiction. Griffin's character is also a good contrast to Kemp who is willing to sacrifice himself to stop Griffin terrorism even though none of this is Kemp's fault. The novel also ends on a nice twist leaving the reader to wonder what the future consequences of this technology will be.
The novel has aged fairly well since it is mainly character and moral dilemma/temptation driven. Its appropriate to teen readers and above and is probably his most generally accessible work out of these four novels.
War of the Worlds
His sixth and most famous novel (thanks in part to Orson Welles' famous radio play), this is an example of the invasion literature that was popular in England at the time with space aliens substituting for the usual German invaders. Explosions are seen on Mars and soon after "meteors" land in England. They contain tripod shaped alien machines that make quick work of the British military through heat rays and black smoke weapons. The second half of the book deals with the aftermath with the martians collecting people with the tentacles and draining them of their blood for nourishment. Eventually the main character gives up hope, when he realizes they have all died from bacteria.
It was considered a bit brutal at the time in its depictions of violence, but its fairly tame by today's standards. Its main problem is that it has been copied so much that it doesn't feel very fresh anymore and the ending is too much of a dues ex machina ending for most readers. The martians are unstoppable for almost the entire book and then they just drop dead. If you don't mind that, its still an entertaining read.
All four of these have been turned into feature films and have had many imitators in books and film. All of them are appropriate for early teen readers, though the language may take a bit of getting used to unless they have read other Victorian era books beforehand.
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