Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson: The book that started it all! It's got lost treasure, pirates, action, adventure, drama, intrigue and a whole bunch of awesome characters. Name anything about pirates that you think are facts and you may be surprised to find that it actually originates from this classic book.

Five on a Treasure Island - Enid Blyton: This one is a children's book starring the "Famous Five" from Enid Blyton, but it is such a timeless classic that I'm sure even grown-ups will get caught up in it. As it is the first book in the series, it is also a perfect place to start if you have not yet read any of the books about this group of adventurous kids. In this book the children visit their cousin who takes them to an island that belongs to her family. Their adventure begins when a storm uncovers a previously inaccessible shipwreck, which contains a treasure map that appears to indicate that there is a lost treasure hidden away in the castle that is on the island.

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline: I recently watched this one on blu-ray and it inspired me to read the book again, which in my opinion is still better. I think Ready Player One also fits the category of hunting lost treasure, even if in this book the treasure is hidden in a virtual reality game. The treasure in Ready Player One is actually an "Easter egg" that grants the person who finds it the fortune left behind by the creator of the game. What is nice about this particular treasure hunt is that instead of a map with "X" that marks the spot, the clues are all hidden in 1980s pop culture, which is why I recon the book is so popular with people my age. There's definitely a lot of nostalgia involved if you grew up with the references found in this book, but it is still entertaining even if you are younger or older.

If you can overlook some of the more dated elements and content that came from a less politically correct era, then the books by Sir Henry Rider Haggard will provide you with hours of reading pleasure. His first book in the Allan Quatermain series, King Solomon's Mines, is one of my favorites and allegedly Haggard wrote it due to a bet with his brother that he couldn't write anything as good as Treasure Island. Not only did Haggard write a novel that far surpassed Treasure Island, in my humble opinion, but it is also credited with kick-starting the whole "Lost World" genre of literature.

My all time favorite treasure hunt book is one that I am sure everyone is familiar with, namely Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Not only is Treasure Island a great book, but it is also a hugely influential one and probably one that has done most to alter the public perception about pirates. I read this book as a young boy and I loved how the tale unfolded from the viewpoint of Jim Hawkins, who was a teenager with just as much love for adventure as me. For a treasure hunt that is not quite as pirate-y, I would say that The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is also a riveting read.

I see everyone is posting fiction books here, but since you did not specify I would recommend a great book that I read many years ago called "Lost Gold & Buried Treasure: A Treasure Hunter's Guide to 250 Fortunes Waiting To Be Found." It was written by Keven D. Randle, who was a Captain of the US Air Force Reserve. As far as I know, nobody has managed to find any of the fortunes in the book since it was written, but it still makes for a very interesting read. It actually amazes me how much lost treasure there are still left in the world, just waiting to be found.

A more recent example would be the W.C. Jameson book, Lost Treasures & American History. The author is actually a professional treasure hunter and has first-hand experience with searching for all the buried treasures and lost mines that he describes in the book. From lost Spanish gold in the Sandia mountains to the Benedict Arnold Treasure and the treasure of Sir Francis Drake, there's plenty of good stories in here.

My final choice would be The book of Buried Treasure: Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, Etc., Which Are Sought for to This Day by Ralph Delahaye Paine. This book is in the public domain I believe and while it is quite old, it contains more than enough great information about lost or buried treasure to keep you turning the pages. Just don't be surprised if you get the urge to invest in a metal detector and go out looking for your own buried treasure after reading all these books.

Since you did not specify whether you mean fiction or non-fiction I would have to go with a book called The Hot Zone by an author by the name of Richard Preston. It is a non-fiction thriller that was published in 1995 already, but I didn't read it until 2014 when it seemed like the only news on television was about a possible Ebola outbreak in America. From what I can remember, there was a man in Dallas who came back from Africa and died from Ebola. The two nurses who cared for him both got the virus as well and I was severely freaked out when I discovered that one of them was in my hometown of Akron Ohio before she knew that she was infected. There was a lot of panic during this time and I remember how terrified I was when there was all the talk of how the Ebola might go airborne and spread like wildfire. I was still in school when all of this was happening and even the thought of going going there or to public places like the mall scared me. It was so bad that my heart literally started beating faster whenever I heard the sounds of sirens outside. I started reading The Hot Zone to find out more about viruses and how they affected the public during outbreaks, but there were a few times where I had to stop reading just to calm my nerves with some music or painting. The way in which the author describes how diseases progress and the effect they have on their unfortunate victims literally made my stomach churn a few times. I now know of course that the author may have exaggerated some of the things like the way in which the virus literally dissolves your organs, but back then with all the news of a near certain outbreak in America it was scary as hell. After a while it became apparent that nobody in our town was getting sick and none of the fearmongering predictions came true, so life slowly returned to normal, but I still get a shiver down my spine whenever I think back to reading that book while huddled up in bed and wondering what I will do if the people around me suddenly developed symptoms.