Get Your Vitamin Sea With These 11 Novels Set on Cruise Ships

Published in 2020, this witty story about a multi-generational family who takes a Mediterranean cruise vacation after the 70-year-old mother, Charlotte Perkins, wins the trip when her essay is chosen as the winner in the Become a Jetsetter contest. This quickly became a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick. Over 10 days, three once-estranged siblings reunite with Charlotte and grapple with secrets and truths.

An eerie mood presides over this 2017 New York Times best-selling thriller when protagonist Lo Blacklock swears she saw a woman tossed overboard. And yet all guests are in attendance. Or are they? Instead of relaxing on board this luxury small-ship cruise ship (dubbed “Aurora”), Lo—a travel writer on assignment—vows to crack the case by the time the sailing in the North Sea (in Northern Europe) wraps.

Who doesn’t love a feel-good romance centered around the Christmas holiday—and away from weird family dynamics? The extremely prolific Michaels (she’s got 150 books to her name, and counting) published this book in 2021. Four long-time girlfriends from high school board a singles’ cruise out of Miami as a DIY 15-year reunion and bond over shore excursions and, well, single men everywhere they look.

Levine was a sitcom writer for shows like Laverne & Shirley and The Love Boat. What sounds like an innocent proposition for freelance writer Jaine Austin—for the eighth book in the Jaine Austin series, published in 2009, she’s asked to teach a writing class on board a cruise ship from Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera—turns out to be more than a free vacation. Those seven days at sea are anything but bliss—more like a dead body.

In this recently published novel, set in 1939 on board the SS Columbus to Africa, detective couple Bert and Mamie Mason leave their Ohio home for an adventure they didn’t quite expect. Not long after enjoying the buffet and pool, and not having to cook their own meals or make their own bed, they stumble upon a murder they must solve and struggle to still enjoy the five-star lifestyle while diving into work mode.

Published in 2006 as the sixth book in the “Alvirah & Willy” series, the plot concerns a cruise sailing out of Miami the day after Christmas with a carefully curated guest list. Its passengers were gifted with a cruise on board the brand-new “Royal Mermaid” ship, and not until they’ve left port is it revealed two escaped criminals are among them.

Cruises are all about flaunting the first-class lifestyle and Thomas’ 2020 novel—the first of two titles in the “A Sapphire Story of the Seas Cruise Ship Vacation Romance” series—is no exception. Two potential lovers meet on a cruise: one who recently canceled her wedding and the other, gasp, on the sailing with another woman. Will the billionaire and the jilted bride end up together?

Parallel storylines of a physical journey (boarding an ocean liner from England to Australia) with an emotional journey (a female cast, including protagonist Lily Shepherd, attempting to escape their pasts) are the nexus of this 2019 novel, set in 1939. The story does not take place entirely on board, however: port stops are in glam locales such as Naples, Ceylon, and Cairo.

This 1939 classic turned into a 2022 movie (and earlier, in 1978) spins a tale of characters sailing on Karnak, a steamer sailing the Nile River. When the news that passenger Linnet Ridgeway was shot dead, shock ripples through the cabins. Thankfully detective Hercule Poirot is on board.

This Cuban-American author’s latest novel publishes in April. Her 2028 debut, Next Year in Havana, was a Reese’s Book Club selection. On a round-trip voyage from New York to Havana in 1934, Cleeton weaves in the true tale of the SS Morro Castle, a ship that caught fire and ran aground, through the lens of two passengers: a seemingly Cuban heiress and a woman thought to be dead.

In 2004, Hiassen published this story about—spoiler alert—marine biologist Chaz Perrone who pushes his deceitful wife overboard on a luxury cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean after she unearths a scam he was involved in. That she lives to tell, by pretending to be dead, is the twist.