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Some more awesome and/or fun popular writers

Ponson du Terrail and Rocambole
A prolific writer, Ponson wrote some 80 novels in 20 years. My father used to say that Ponson had so many characters in his books that he kept track by cutting little cardboard figurines with the name of each hero. One day, one piece fell on the floor and was swept away by the cleaning lady: the corresponding hero disappeared from the book and never came back. It happens nowadays in soaps, isn't it? I heard the story of an actor being swept to his bedroom in a wheelchair, never to come out in the dining room again...Another side of Ponson is that he had no time to read his own stuff, so you may find rewarding sentences such as "With one hand he seized his sword, and with the other he said this...". There are several novels with Rocambole as the main hero. The stories are so twisted and unbelievable that the French coined the word Rocambolesque to mean ridiculously complex and unbelievable. I could only find it in French on Amazon at the time I am writing this, and it is also in French on the Gutenberg site, but I found a translation on the British Amazon.co.uk: Rocambole (in April 2008, 1pound = 2 dollars).

Michel Zevaco and Pardaillan
Two generations after Alexandre Dumas, the cloak and dagger genre was still very popular with Zevaco's hero, the noble heart Pardaillan. When I was a kid, I read the whole series and more: thousands and thousands of pages! Again today, it was in French on the Gutenberg site and on the Amazon site. Powells had it in Romanian, Abebooks had in Turkish, in Italian and in Spanish. Wikipedia said the English translation is truncated, but I could not even find that. I am very sorry: you are on your own for this one.

Rafael Sabatini and Scaramouche
Sabatini wrote his novels in English and they are easy to find, for instance as free ebooks at this site. His most succesful novel was Scaramouche but there is a lot more to read. A young man sees his best friend killed and swears to avenge his death. In the course of the story, he falls in love and learns to fight. He has to flee the bad guys and follows itinerant comedians, hiding himself behind the mask of Scaramuccia, a regular feature of the Italian theater (Commedia del Arte). This made a fine classic movie with Stewart Granger.

The theme has inspired a well known book by the French poet Theophile Gautier: Capitaine Fracasse
To find more of Sabatini's books such as Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, use the link to discoveries and sea novels.

Paul Feval and Le Bossu (The Hunchback)
This is one of the best books of adventures you can read. It takes place under the French Regency (1715-1723, when King Louis XV was still an infant). The hero, Lagardere, fights the powerful Prince de Gonzague who killed his best friend, the duke de Nemours, and tried to murder the duke's little girl to inherit her fortune. Lagardere first saves the little girl and flees to Spain with her. At one point, he has to come back to Paris and let the truth be known. He disguises himself as a hunchback and makes money by letting people sign their financial contracts on his back to bring them luck (a popular superstition of the time); the disguise allows him to go inside the palace of the Prince de Gonzague. It allows the author to describe the fantastic story of the first paper money in France. The real life banker John Law created speculation that ended up in bankrupcy and shaked the throne of France (the story is on several sites, but I like this one best).
The son of Feval, Paul Feval fils, wrote a lot of stories using his father's heroes, plus d'Artagnan, Cyrano de Bergerac and any well known hero he could think of. As a 10 years old kid, I remember begging the next door librarian to sell them all to me: I was too young to get a reading card! He finally gave up and sold them to me, I read that like you eat ice cream. See for instance The Mysterious Cavalier. This being said, Feval the father is a better writer.

Victor Hugo and Les Misérables
All readers agree that the best translation is the Signet Classic version translated by Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee They disgree on whether you should read a short or the unabridged version. I vote for the unabridged. If you do not have the patience, just watch the movie or read the summary in Wikepedia. This is not about action: it is about social conscience and how personalities are framed by history, so there are a lot of detailed historical pages. An abridged version misses the point. The style is complex too, this is not a pocketbook mystery novel. If you do not want to put the effort, it is OK: there are plenty of great books that I do not want to read either. Hundreds of novels came from the themes running in that book. It is the story of a young man who is hungry. He steals a piece of bread, an illegal act for which the police will pursue him for the rest of his life. A gentle priest converts him and from now on he is going to live like a good person (this being said, Hugo was a free thinker, criticizing the church for its lack of empathy for people at a disadvantage). The story is filled with unforgettable characters, such as Cosette, a poor little abused girl, the tenacious inspector Javert and Gavroche, a young witty untamed boy who dies during the French Revolution.

Eugene Sue and the Mysteries of Paris
This was the first popular social novel in France, preceeding and influencing Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. The hero is an aristocrat who has the ability to disguise himself and walk inconspicuously in the worst parts of Paris. It is hard to find all the English volumes at the same time, but you can download another book of Sue for free: The Wandering Jew from the Gutenberg site. This is about some murderous Jesuits trying to kill a family for their money.