Books like The Girl on the Carpathia

This book, which I also borrowed from my brother, is a collection of hundreds of snippets of letters, newspaper articles, diary entries, and other sources, the voices of people connected with the disaster.

Survivors, relatives of the lost, people who were involved with building the ship or who simply went to wave her off from Southampton. It also includes a lot of photographs, and as a novelist was so helpful to give me a sense of what it was like for people involved at the time, from so many different angles.

If Walter Lord’s book is the definitive account of the sinking, this large-format encyclopaedic volume, almost large enough to sink a ship, is the definitive story of the Titanic, from the drawing board to the bottom of the ocean, with nothing omitted between the two events. It is an epic work of research so comprehensive that it deserves a wholly new category of publishing: more than a book, Titanic – Triumph and Tragedy, is a museum.

First published in 1986, it was updated in the 1990s to include new information and photographs following the discovery of the wreck, which Eaton and Haas, both acknowledged Titanic experts, had seen for themselves from a submersible. 

The book’s structure is that of a sequential archive illustrated by more than a thousand contemporary photographs, including Harland & Wolff’s original architectural plans and engineering drawings. It moves from the launch in Belfast to life… show more.

The Watch That Ends The Night tells the story of the Titanic through the voices of those who were there. I read this after I had written my own most recent book and was struck with how similarly Allan and I approached historical catastrophes. Both books are multi-voiced and contemplate the same issues of privilege and class distinctions. Like me, Allan chose to listen to nature and endow her with a voice of her own.

Nicola Pierce’s Titanic: True Stories of Her Passengers, Crew and Legacy details not only Titanic’s story, but her sister’s tragedies. It questions whether Bruce Ismay was really a villain and poses the idea that he might be a hero; it critically examines Captain Smith’s behaviour the night of the sinking. It follows the events of the Carpathia and Californian, lending insight into what happened on both ships that night, reminding us the Titanic didn’t just hit an iceberg: She was trapped in an iceberg field. It finishes on the Mackay-Bennett, the funeral ship sent to ferry back as many of Titanic’s dead as they could, reminding us that the tragedy didn’t end on the 15th of April, but would continue for months on end – and for many, years. 

Pierce’s novel was one of my biggest sources for my book. I’d heard of the Mackay-Bennett… show more.

I came across a mention of Violet Jessop in a Wikipedia article right at the start of my research into Titanic and her sister ships.

She worked on all three ships – Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic, and survived not one but two shipwrecks. Even after those harrowing events she went back to work on Olympic until the ship was retired in the 1930s.

Her autobiography was published posthumously, and makes for fascinating reading. I ended up including her as a minor character in my novel, and she’ll feature in my forthcoming novel too!

I chose this for the power of hook and title. This action & adventure novel with historical elements has the greatest title in the history of literature.

The purpose of a title is to sell the book, and no title ever succeeded so well. Raise the Titanic! was published a decade before the wreck of Titanic was discovered, so in the world’s imagination the ship was still largely intact. Cussler tapped into the intoxicating idea of the legendary ship’s resurrection and the completion of its maiden voyage.

I was so struck when I saw Raise the Titanic! in a bookstore, I decided to buy it before I picked it up. The book propelled Cussler from moderate success to the best-selling grandmaster of adventure, and it inspired my search for a hook and title.

The Titanic novel my mum bought me for my eighth birthday, it was this one, which is why it can’t not be included (though mine is tattered and the back cover long lost. I can’t yet bring myself to buy a new one). Titanic: The Long Night is like a hot cup of chocolate on a cold winter’s night. It’s sinking into a bath and thinking, This is exactly what I need. It tells two stories: That of first-class passenger, Elizabeth Farr, who falls in love with handsome first-class passenger and artist, Max Whittaker, and third-class passenger Kathleen Hanrahan, who is travelling from Ireland to America to pursue her dreams. Kathleen falls for the youngest Keller brother, “Paddy” (I cannot tell you how many years I yearned for my very own “Paddy”, that was how much I loved his character). 

There’s something so joyful about this novel. It’s full of… show more.

I have often wondered what it would have been like to be a child on board the "unsinkable" Titanic.

Lindsey Littleson takes real children who were passengers on the ship, and imagines how they might have entertained themselves before tragedy struck. To pass the time, Bertha, Madge, and Johan set up their own detective agency and look for mysteries to solve.

This fast-paced and engaging story also explores the social divisions on board the ship, and builds tension with unsettling hints of the disaster to come. Of course, I knew what was about to happen, but the ending was all the more poignant because by then, I cared about the three children.

This book cleverly takes a famous historical event and looks at it through a child’s eyes.

Sometimes you think you know all about a famous incident, I mean the Titanic has been overdone in films and books, right? Well, Stacey Lee gives it a totally fresh approach from the point of view of a young Chinese-English teen, Valora Luck. And while this is a fictional take on what might have happened, the fact that there were Chinese people onboard The Titanic, who at that time would not have been allowed into the USA makes for a gripping and thought-provoking read. And then of course there’s Stacey Lee’s wonderful storytelling!

Valora Luck has a dream that one day she and her brother will be famous acrobats, touring America. But once she’s on board The Titanic, she soon discovers she must hide her identity, both as a girl and as a servant, and use her talents to save her brother and his motley band of friends. But like… show more.

This is my only non-fiction pick, but it reads a little like a gripping work of fiction except that I had to keep pinching myself to remember it really happened. The author is writing about her experience as a professional violinist in a "fake" orchestra. It is a wonderfully nuanced look at the gray area between "fake" and "real", which is devastatingly pertinent to our times. It challenges us to consider if we can actually always tell the difference and if the difference is really clear-cut at all. The reason I'm including it in the list is that the main protagonist, the author, is a strong woman who is determined to make her own way. And there is one section I found particularly satisfying, in which (and I don't think this will give too much away) she refuses to include any romance in the book. She declines to write of… show more.