Professor Challenger returns in The Poison Belt to see his friends Malone, Roxton and Summerlee through another hair-raising adventure. True to form, the eccentric and bad-tempered professor finds himself on the receiving end of universal incredulity when he proposes that the Earth is passing through a cosmic belt of poisonous gas. Together with his wife and his friends, the professor succeeds in sealing himself off in a room of his home with an independent oxygen supply where they can only wait and observe as his predictions prove devastatingly correct.

The Poison Belt is the second story featuring Professor Challenger. Also included in this volume are two short stories, "When the World Screamed" and "The Disintegration Machine". The style of these stories is consistent with that found in the first Challenger story, The Lost World and are essential reading for the devotee of Doyle.

This unabridged edition of The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle includes:

~ Annotations
~ The short story "When the World Screamed"
~ The short story "The Disintegration Machine"
~ A forward by the editor
~ A brief biography of the author

The body of this edition's text has not been abridged and is true to the form it took when originally published (The Poison Belt, 1913). All contributions by the editor are intended to make the book more accessible to the modern reader without resorting to alteration.