McCracken and the Lost Vessel

Seeking adventure? Look no further!

 January 1920. McCracken is in Australia for the wedding of his friends, Digger and Barbs, when a mysterious stranger turns up with a challenging proposal: travel through the South Pacific in search of Captain Nemo’s miraculous submarine, the Nautilus. But it soon turns out that McCracken is not the only one who seeks Nemo’s lost vessel, and the search quickly becomes a life-or-death chase across Australia and through the South Seas to the mysterious island where Nemo drew his last breath . . .

Soft cover. 205 pp.

If Catholic Adventure Has a Name, It Must Be McCracken

If you weren’t aware of McCracken, you should know that he’s been described as “Indiana Jones with a Rosary.”

Engineer, adventurer, big-game hunter, defeater of nefarious villains . . . and of course husband and father. The McCracken Adventures take place in the early years of the twentieth century, when many of the philosophies that formed the modern imagination were taking shape. Consequently, McCracken’s adversaries are representatives of the Culture of Death. What is the Catholic response to nihilism, communism, eugenics and many others? McCracken provides young readers with a guide through the minefield of twentieth-century thought. But the focus is on adventure. So come along and dodge the bullets, flee from the Cossacks and head-hunters, jump out of zeppelins, dive to the ocean floor or soar above the clouds in a biplane, because life is an adventure!

The McCracken books are written so that you can read each one as a stand-alone. But if you really want to read them in the order that they happen, this is the chronology:

• McCracken and the Lost Island (1913, set in Kenya and the Mediterranean)

• McCracken and the Lost Valley (September 1914, set in northern France, Portugal, the Caspian Sea and the Himalayas)

• McCracken and the Lost City (May 1915, set in New York City and on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico)

• McCracken and the Lost Lagoon (January 1916, set in the British Honduras and West Africa)

• McCracken and the Lost Lady (April 1917, set in Italy, Switzerland, and various locations in Russia and Siberia)

• McCracken and the Lost Cavern (Spring 1918, set on the Western Front in France, London, and Scotland)

• McCracken and the Lost Oasis (Autumn 1919, set in Egypt and the Sahara Desert)

• McCracken and the Lost Vessel (January 1920, set in Australia and the South Pacific)