Retellings of classic fairy tales from all around the world.


Compiled by:
Becky F.
Among the Beasts and Briars

Ashley Poston
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Poston)

A Beauty and the Beast retelling. Cerys is safe in the Kingdom of Aloriya. Here there are no droughts, disease, or famine, and peace is everlasting. It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king made a bargain with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden. When Cerys was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse--the magic--in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything.


Anne of Greenville

Mariko Tamaki
(Young Adult Fiction – Y Tamaki)

An Anne of Green Gables retelling. Anne Shirley, a queer, half-Japanese disco superfan, moves to a town that seems too small for her big personality. She has a tendency to fall in love quickly and deeply, and to fly off the handle in the face of jerks-- who are unfortunately in abundance in Greenville.


Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales

Soman Chainani
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Chainan)

Multiple fairytales retelling. Twelve tales, twelve dangerous tales of mystery, magic, and rebellious hearts. Each twists like a spindle to reveal truths full of warning and triumph, truths that free hearts long kept tame, truths that explore life, and death.


Cinderella is Dead

Kalynn Bayron
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bayron)

A Cinderella retelling. Two hundred years after Cinderella found her prince, the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again. Sophia tries to flee the ball, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella's mausoleum. Together with Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters, Sophia vows to bring down the king once and for all.


A Clash of Steel

C.B. Lee
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lee)

A Treasure Island retelling. The legendary Dragon Fleet, the scourge of the South China Sea, is no more. Xiang has grown up with stories about the Dragon Fleet and its ruthless leader, a woman known only as the Dragon Queen. Xiang and Anh hunt the South China Sea for the lost treasure of the fabled pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao.


A Curse of Roses

Diana Pinguicha
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Pinguic)

A Portuguese legend retelling. Yzabel sought out Fatyan to help her save the people of Portugal from the famine caused by a reverse magic within her turning food to flowers, but when love begins to blossom between them, it could mean Yzabel's destruction instead.


Dark and Deepest Red

Anna-Marie McLemore
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mclemor)

A retelling of The Red Shoes. Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves.


The Drowned Woods

Emily Lloyd-Jones
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lloydjo)

A Welsh Fairytale retelling. Mer, the last living water diviner in the isles of Wales, seeks revenge against the prince who used her powers for his own evil ends.


The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

Axie Oh
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Oh)

A retelling of the Korean folktale The Tale of Shim Cheong. Mina is swept away to the Spirit Realm, where, assisted by a motley crew of demons, gods, and lesser spirits, she sets out to awaken the sleeping Sea God and save her homeland and family from deadly storms.


Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Melissa Bashardoust
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bashard)

A Persian Myth retelling. Soraya, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch, has lived eighteen years in the shadows but as her twin brother's wedding approaches, she faces choices with unimaginable consequences.


The Grimrose Girls

Laura Pohl
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Pohl)

Multiple Grimm's Fairytales retelling. While investigating the apparent suicide of their best friend, four students at an elite boarding school uncover a series of past murders connected to ancient fairy tale curses, and they fear that their own fates are tied to the stories, dooming them to gruesome deaths unless they can forge their own paths.


The Guinevere Deception

Kiersten White
(Young Adult Fiction - Y White)

A King Arthur retelling. Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom's borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution-- send in Guinevere to be Arthur's wife and his protector from those who want to see the young king's idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere's real name-- and her true identity-- is a secret.


House of Salt and Sorrows

Erin A. Craig
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Craig)

12 Dancing Princess Retelling. In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed. Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.


Legendborn

Tracy Deonn
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Deonn)

A King Arthur retelling. To discover the truth behind her mother's mysterious death, a teen girl infiltrates a magical secret society claiming to be the descendants of King Arthur and his knights


Little Thieves

Margaret Owen
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Owen)

A retelling of The Goose Girl. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back by stealing Gisele's life for herself.


Medusa

Jessie Burton
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Burton)

A retelling of the myth of Medusa. Exiled to a far-flung island, Medusa has little company except for the snakes adorning her head instead of hair until a beautiful boy named Perseus arrives, disrupting her lonely existence and unleashing desire, love, and betrayal.


Never Look Back

Lilliam Rivera
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Rivera)

An Orpheus myth retelling. Eury comes to the Bronx as a girl haunted. Haunted by losing everything in Hurricane Maria--and by an evil spirit, Ato. She fully expects the tragedy that befell her and her family in Puerto Rico to catch up with her in New York. Yet, for a time, she can almost set this fear aside, because there's this boy . . .


Ordinary Girls

Blair Thornburgh
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Thornbu)

A Sense and Sensibility retelling. Plum and her older sister Ginny find their relationship tested by family finances, personality differences, and the secrets they are keeping from each other.


Our Wayward Fate

Gloria Chao
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Chao)

A retelling of The Butterfly Lovers. Ali is simultaneously swept up in a whirlwind romance and down a rabbit hole of family secrets when another Taiwanese family moves into tiny, predominantly-white, Plainhart, Indiana.


Pride and Premeditation

Tirzah Price
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Price)

Pride and Prejudice retelling. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young woman who desires a law career must be in want of a case. So when Lizzie Bennet hears about a scandalous society murder, she sees an opportunity to prove herself as a solicitor by solving the case and ensuring justice is served.


Sisters of the Snake

Sasha Nanua, Sarena Nanua
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Nanua)

A The Prince and the Pauper retelling. A street thief and a princess discover they are twins separated at birth-and must switch places to find an all-powerful stone and prevent a deadly war from taking place.


Six Crimson Cranes

Elizabeth Lim
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lim)

A retelling of The Wild Swans. The exiled Princess Shiori must unravel the curse that turned her six brothers into cranes, and she is assisted by her spurned betrothed, a capricious dragon, and a paper bird brought to life by her own magic.


Skin of the Sea

Natasha Bowen
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bowen)

A West African myth/ Little Mermaid retelling. Transformed by the goddess Yemoja into a Mami Wati, an African mermaid charged with collecting the souls of those who die at sea, Simi goes against the gods to save a living boy, Kola, from drowning.


Thorn

Intisar Khanani
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Khanani)

A retelling of The Goose Girl. To escape her cruel family and contemptuous court, fifteen-year-old Princess Alyrra is willing to marry Prince Kestrin but when she magically swaps lives with her nemesis, she may find happiness as a commoner.


Travelers along the way

Aminah Mae Safi
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Safi)

A Robin Hood retelling. The Third Crusade rages on. Rahma al-Hud loyally followed her elder sister Zeena into the war over the Holy Land, but now that the Faranji invaders have gotten reinforcements from Richard the Lionheart, all she wants to do is get herself and her sister home alive. But Zeena, a soldier of honor at heart, refuses to give up the fight while Jerusalem remains in danger of falling back into the hands of the false Queen Isabella. And so, Rahma has no choice but to take on one final mission with her sister.