A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (Penguin, 1978). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Originally published in 1955, this is the grand-daddy of Titanic books, the one that has inspired more people than any other and was the basis of the 1958 film. Walter Lord painstakingly researched evidence from both the UK and US investigations into the tragedy and tracked down and interviewed scores of survivors to produce a book packed with detail.

The Night Lives On by Walter Lord (Avon, 1998). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
'The untold stories and secrets behind the sinking of the "unsinkable" ship – Titanic!' Walter Lord's 1986 follow-up to A Night to Remember, published more than 30 years later. He examines the controversial issues of that night step by step, giving the reader both the official version and the one most widely believed. This is the book that tells you what happened on the Titanic. Did a man really dress up as a woman? Were shots really fired?

The Discovery of the Titanic by Robert D Ballard (Orion, 1997)
The account of the finding of the site of the Titanic by the leader of the team that discovered it in 1985. Contains tremendously evocative photographs of the ship in its ocean grave. The book is also a testament to state-of-the-art undersea technology.
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The Story of the Titanic as told by its survivors edited by Jack Winocur (Dover, 1960). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Contains 'The Loss of the SS Titanic, Its Story and Its Lessons' by second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley (1912); 'The Truth about the Titanic' (1913) by Colonel Archibald Gracie who was in first class; relevant chapters from Titanic and Other Ships (1935) by the ship's second officer Charles Lightoller; and the account of Harold Bride, assistant Marconi operator, published in the New York Times on 28 April 1912, less than two weeks after the disaster.

Titanic: An illustrated history by Ken Marschall and Don Lynch (Hodder & Stoughton, 1998). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
This collection of paintings by Ken Marschall, accompanied by Don Lynch's explanatory text, recreates the splendour of the liner.

Titanic – Triumph and Tragedy: A chronicle in words and pictures by John P Eaton and Charles Haas (Patrick Stephens, 2nd edition 1994)
Features information on the wreck, its artefacts and the controversy surrounding various attempts at recovering these.
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Titanic Remembered: The unsinkable ship and Halifax by Alan Ruffman (Formac, 2000). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
This exhaustively researched book on the Titanic's links with Halifax, Nova Scotia contains the most authoritative examination of the tragic final chapter in the ship's history: the retrieval of the dead from the sea and their burial in Halifax. It is also the guidebook for an exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in that Canadian city.

Dusk to Dawn: Survivor accounts of the last night on the Titanic by Paul J Quinn (Fantail, 1999).
Beginning at 8pm as the sun sets, each chapter takes the reader through another hour of the unfolding tragedy. Numerous eyewitness accounts provide details of the passengers and crew - their actions, thoughts and feelings on that night. The narrative continues until dawn, when the last lifeboat is taken aboard the rescue ship Carpathia. The book is illustrated with 27 of the author's original colour paintings and 80 black-and-white archive photographs. For a preview, check out Paul Quinn's website.
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Ghosts of the Titanic by Charles Pellegrino (Avon, 2001)
A scientific explanation of why the ship sank (by a scientist who has visited the wreck), combined with an historical narrative of its last hours.
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Unsinkable: The full story of the RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler (Da Capo, 2002)
Drawn from primary sources and period accounts, this new narrative – from the Titanic's conception in an Irish shipyard to the ambitious modern-day attempts to salvage it – puts the disaster into historical context and serves as an essential resource for scholars of Titanic lore.
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Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and recipes from the great liner by Rick Archbold and Dana McCauley (Hyperion Books, 1997).
A review on Amazon.co.uk of Last Dinner on the Titanic is headed 'Dining with the doomed', which sums up the fascination of this recipe book cum history. Hundreds of first-class passengers dined in opulence on gourmet fare such as quails' eggs with caviar while steaming unknowingly into oblivion. In the book, descriptions and anecdotes are illustrated with archive photographs and period paintings, resulting in a visual journey back in time. Of the 50 dishes researched from the actual menu, many will fail to appeal to modern appetites, such as consommé Olga, made from dried spinal marrow of sturgeon. There are also suggestions for staging your own Titanic party.
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