The Best Retellings to Add to Your Reading List
Classic Stories, Fresh Perspectives
Retellings are the perfect way to revisit stories you love (or thought you knew) through a new lens. From reimagined myths and fairy tales to historical and literary classics with a twist, these books offer fresh perspectives, memorable characters, and unexpected surprises.
Whether you’re building a book club list, searching for your next compelling read, or simply looking for stories that feel both familiar and refreshingly new, these retellings promise to captivate and delight.
Rediscover the Stories You Thought You Knew!
Familiar Tales Rewritten:
The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A wild and willful young woman finds herself at the center of a tale of spirits, ancient evils, and the mysterious winter-king Frost--in the lyrical first novel of the Winternight Trilogy.
"A beautiful deep-winter story, full of magic and monsters and the sharp edges of growing up."--Naomi Novik, bestselling author of Uprooted
Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse's fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil.
Then Vasya's widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya's stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring. And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.
The Bloody Chamber
by Angela Carter - Kelly Link
For the 75th anniversary of her birth, a Deluxe Edition of the master of the literary supernatural's most celebrated book--featuring a new introduction by Kelly Link, the author of the national bestseller The Book of Love and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber--which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves--she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.
Boy, Snow, Bird
by Helen Oyeyemi
As seen on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was described as "gloriously unsettling... evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson," and already one of the year's most widely acclaimed novels:
From the prizewinning author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant recasting of the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity.
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts looking, she believes, for beauty--the opposite of the life she's left behind in New York. She marries Arturo Whitman, a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow.
Circe
by Madeline Miller
This #1 New York Times bestseller is a "bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story" that brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey (Alexandra Alter, TheNew York Times).
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
A Court of Thorns and Roses
by Sarah J Maas
The sexy, action-packed first book in the #1 bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series from global phenomenon Sarah J. Maas.
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.
At least, he's not a beast all the time.
Cress
by Marissa Meyer
Soon to be adapted into a major motion picture!
The third book in the #1 New York Times- and USA Today-Bestselling Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer! The evil space queen gives an imprisoned hacker orders to track down our cyborg heroine and her team of reimagined fairytale characters. Can the Rapunzel-like hacker break free and help them instead?
"An interesting mash up of fairy tales and science fiction . . . a cross between Cinderella, Terminator, and Star Wars." --Entertainment Weekly on the Lunar Chronicles
Because if there was one thing Cress knew about heroes, it was that they could not resist a damsel in distress. And she was nothing if not in distress.
Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.
Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker; unfortunately, she's just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.
Kaikeyi
by Vaishnavi Patel
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "MYTHIC RETELLING AT ITS BEST." (R. F. Kuang, author of Yellowface) - A 2023 IGNYTE AWARD FINALIST - A BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB PICK
"With a graceful, measured elegance" (New York Times), this lyrical novel reimagines the life of the infamous queen from the ancient epic the Ramayana, giving voice to an extraordinary woman determined to leave her mark in a world where gods and men dictate the shape of things to come.
I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions--much good it did me.
So begins Kaikeyi's story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on legends of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the devout and the wise. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear.
Local Heavens
by K M Fajardo
A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he's struck by the city's contradictions--shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby's frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren't all they seem--and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He's the reason they don't. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
Lore
by Alexandra Bracken
THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER
"Epic from start to finish." --Marie Lu, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Warcross
"A brilliant and breathless twist on classic mythology!" --Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lunar Chronicles
Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt's promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man--now a god--responsible for their deaths.
March: Pulitzer Prize Winner
by Geraldine Brooks
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord.
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.
On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth
"Thoroughly original . . . A novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars--on both sides of the Atlantic--serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey
In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep.
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart -- he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone -- but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.
Stepsister
by Jennifer Donnelly
* "Printz Honor winner Donnelly offers up a stunningly focused story that rips into the heart of familiar fairy tale. Isabelle [is] a shattered but not unredeemable girl with a warrior's heart." -- Booklist, starred review
An instant New York Times bestseller
Isabelle should be blissfully happy -- she's about to win the handsome prince. Except Isabelle isn't the beautiful girl who lost the glass slipper and captured the prince's heart. She's the ugly stepsister who cut off her toes to fit into Cinderella's shoe . . . which is now filling with blood.
Thorn
by Intisar Khanani
Hunted meets The Wrath and the Dawn in this bold fairytale retelling--where court intrigue, false identities, and dark secrets will thrill fans of classic and contemporary fantasy alike.
Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life, but when her mother betroths her to a powerful prince in a distant kingdom, she has little hope for a better future.
Until Alyrra arrives at her new kingdom, where a mysterious sorceress robs her of both her identity and her role as princess--and Alyrra seizes on the opportunity to start a new life for herself as a goose girl.
Uprooted
by Naomi Novik
NEBULA AWARD WINNER - HUGO AWARD FINALIST - "If you want a fantasy with strong characters and brilliantly original variations on ancient stories, try Uprooted!"--Rick Riordan
"Breathtaking . . . a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, BuzzFeed, Tordotcom, BookPage, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.
Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys - Edwidge Danticat
Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys's return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction's most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
Winter
by Marissa Meyer
Soon to be adapted into a major motion picture!
The final book in the #1 New York Times- and USA Today-Bestselling Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. As the story draws to a close, our team of fairytale heroines must join forces with wicked Levana's own stepdaughter to stop the evil space queen once and for all--or lose everything.
"An interesting mash up of fairy tales and science fiction . . . a cross between Cinderella, Terminator, and Star Wars." --Entertainment Weekly on the Lunar Chronicles
She was not a girl of ice and glass at all, but a girl of sunshine and stardust, because Jacin wasn't going to die.
Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.
Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won't approve of her feelings for her childhood friend--the handsome palace guard, Jacin.
The Wolf and the Woodsman
by Ava Reid
In the vein of Naomi Novik's New York Times bestseller
Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden's national bestseller The Bear
and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut-- inspired by Hungarian
history and Jewish mythology--follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and
a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart
a tyrant.
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman
without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The
villagers blame her corrupted bloodline--her father was a Yehuli man, one of the
much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy
Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king's blood sacrifice, Évike
is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
The Wrath & the Dawn
by Renée Ahdieh
#1 New York Times Bestseller
A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights
Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi's wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she's falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.
She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.
*The book is a Rough Cut Edition (pages are deliberately not the same length).*