Richard Connell

Sanger Rainsford has spent his career hunting the world's most dangerous animals - until he falls overboard near a remote island and washes ashore at the estate of a Russian aristocrat with a very specific hobby. General Zaroff has grown bored of hunting animals too. He's found something that offers a real challenge, and he's delighted that Rainsford has finally arrived to provide it. One of the most reprinted short stories in the English language and the story that essentially invented the "human hunting human" thriller premise - still being remade and referenced a century after it was written.