Books like “Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic”
What to read after “Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic” by Jennifer Niven: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
In 1879 the USS Jeannette sails for the Arctic, chasing a theory about a warm open sea at the pole. Trapped and then crushed by the ice, the crew abandon ship and begin a desperate march across the pack toward Siberia.
Michael Palin follows HMS Erebus from its Antarctic voyages to the Arctic search for the Northwest Passage, where it set out with HMS Terror in 1845 and vanished. Drawing on letters, logs and the later discovery of the wrecks, the book tells the story of the ship and the men who sailed her.
In 1914 Ernest Shackleton sets out to cross Antarctica; in 1915 his ship is crushed by the ice and the crew is left stranded. This account follows their months on drifting floes and the desperate open-boat journey he makes to seek rescue.
Virginia Reeve is hired to lead a dozen women into the Arctic in search of a lost expedition. When only some of them come back, she is tried for murder in Boston. The courtroom testimony and the journey north slowly reveal what happened out on the ice.
In 1740 a British warship hunting a Spanish treasure galleon is wrecked off Patagonia. Months later two groups of survivors reach South America with opposing stories, and a court martial must decide which men were heroes and which were mutineers.
During a mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind. Alone with limited supplies and no way to call Earth, he applies his botany and engineering skills to grow food and signal that he is alive.
Seven members of a university mystery club sail to a remote island that was the scene of an unsolved family murder a year earlier. Cut off by a storm, they are killed one by one, and the survivors must use the rules of detective fiction to name the killer before none are left.
In 1845 two Royal Navy ships sail to find the Northwest Passage and vanish into the Arctic ice. As the crews endure cold, scurvy and starvation, they are stalked across the frozen waste by a creature that should not exist.
Ten teenagers are invited to a party on an isolated island, where a storm cuts them off and a recorded message promises revenge. As a slasher kills them one by one, Meg tries to work out who is behind it before nobody is left.
Young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map in a dead sailor's chest and sails for a distant island where a pirate's gold is buried. Among the crew is the one-legged cook Long John Silver, whose charm hides a plan to seize the hoard.
Shipwrecked alone on a deserted island, a castaway named Robinson Crusoe builds a life from nothing: shelter, crops and a canoe. Years of solitude end when he finds a footprint in the sand and rescues a man he names Friday.
Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury airship that crosses the oceans. When a pirate raid and a storm leave the ship stranded on a remote island, Matt and a rich passenger's daughter, Kate, search for the flying creatures her grandfather claimed to have seen before the pirates close in.
A British weather station on an Arctic ice floe sends a distress call after a fire. A US nuclear submarine is sent to rescue the survivors, but the narrator, a doctor with unclear orders, finds that the station was also a listening post and that someone aboard is lying.
Jack is summoned home to Cadence, an island of two peoples, to find girls who have vanished without trace. He must work with Adaira, the laird's daughter, and call on the spirits he abandoned. On an island steeped in old magic, old grudges and new feelings refuse to stay buried.
An envoy from a galactic federation lands on the frozen world of Gethen to invite its nations into an alliance. Its people have no fixed gender, and as he crosses the ice with a disgraced politician, he learns how much of his own culture he took for granted.
In 1937, a young London clerk joins a year-long expedition to a remote bay in Svalbard. As the polar night closes in and his companions leave one by one, he stays alone with the radio, the cold, and a presence that seems to be waiting in the abandoned camp.
In 1925 the explorer Percy Fawcett walked into the Amazon to find a fabled civilization he called Z, and never came out. Decades later a journalist follows the same trails, sifting clues and rumors to learn what became of the missing expedition.
Five Union prisoners escape a siege in a hot-air balloon and are blown onto an uncharted island. There they rebuild a small civilization from its resources, aided by an unseen hand and threatened by a hidden danger.
In 1859, a disgraced Irish surgeon signs on as doctor of a whaling ship bound for the Arctic. Among the crew is a brutal harpooner with his own plans, and as the voyage turns from routine to disaster, the two men are set on a collision course.
Every summer Cadence joins her wealthy family on their private island, where she and three cousins form an unbreakable group. The summer she is fifteen something goes wrong, and Cadence returns two years later with gaps in her memory that she is desperate to fill.
A group of schoolboys survives a plane crash on a deserted island and tries to govern themselves. Order slips first into fear and then into savagery as the boys turn on one another. An allegory about civilisation, violence and what people become without rules.
Abducted human women crash-land on a frozen alien planet. Georgie sets out for help and meets Vektal, a blue horned alien who says she is his mate and that his chest purrs in her presence. He will help her people survive, but the planet's harsh rules bind them together.
Smilla, a Greenlander living in Copenhagen, trusts the snow. When a neighbour's young son falls from a roof, the tracks tell her it was no accident, and her search leads from the city to an icebreaker bound for a remote Greenland island.
Born to a sun god, Circe is banished to a lonely island for her forbidden magic. She hones her craft, meets travellers and monsters, and slowly chooses what kind of immortal she wants to be.
What should I read after “Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic”?
Start with “In the Kingdom of Ice”, “Erebus: The Story of a Ship”, “Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage”: they are the closest to “Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic” these are Arctic, Survival, Deserted Island), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “In the Kingdom of Ice”, “Erebus: The Story of a Ship”, “The Arctic Fury”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
