Lindsay Littleson lives near Glasgow in Scotland and was a primary teacher for many years.

​

 She won the 2014 Kelpies Prize for her first children’s novel The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean. The sequel, The Awkward Autumn of Lily McLean, was published by Floris Books in 2017 and Guardians of the Wild Unicorns came out in February 2019. Guardians of the Wild Unicorns was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for both the Stockton Children’s Book Prize and East Sussex Children’s Book Prize. Her latest novel, Secrets of the Last Merfolk, came out with Floris this year. 

​

In 2015 her WW1 novel Shell Hole was shortlisted for the Dundee Great War Children’s Book Prize and she enjoyed engaging in research so much that she was inspired to write another two historical books, A Pattern of Secrets, set in Victorian Paisley and The Titanic Detective Agency. 

 

'In The Titanic Detective Agency,  Littleson breathes life into real-life historical characters with an enthralling story of three young people who survive the maiden voyage of the doomed passenger liner, Titanic.

Bertha is a feisty girl with a vivid imagination, whose insatiable curiosity focuses on both passengers and crew. Together with fellow traveller Madge, she becomes interested in the mysterious of Mr. Hoffman, who is travelling alone with his two small children. But very soon, her investigations are interrupted by the appearance of Johan, a Swedish teenager on his way to join his father in South Dakota. Despite the fact that Johan speaks no English and is a third-class passenger, strictly segregated from the rest of those on board, he and Bertha work together to decipher what seems to be a map leading to a treasure hidden somewhere on the ship.

​

The author touches on many aspects of society at the time, especially the contrast between the lives of rich and poor, but she never loses sight of the story itself, deftly weaving fact and fiction together to bring the characters of Bertha and Johan vividly to life as they move towards the climactic moment when the ship comes to grief.' 

​

Littleson has produced teaching resources to support the novel, and both the book and the teaching resources are now being used widely in schools in the UK.