Tales Re-Told
Classic Stories from Another Perspective or with a New Spin
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (Young Adult)
It seems that Lewis Carroll got the “true story” of Alyss Heart from Wonderland quite wrong. After escaping Wonderland and winding up in Victorian London, the young princess is adopted and tells her tale to Reverend Dodgson, who writes the story under a pen name. Back in Wonderland, however, her tyrannical Aunt Redd has taken over and now rules with an iron fist, yet a small but effective band of rebels manages to escape her clutches; meanwhile Hatter Madigan, the royal bodyguard, searches the globe for his charge. Also try: Seeing Redd.
Enchantment by Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction / Fantasy)
Intertwining the story of Sleeping Beauty with Russian mythology, 10-year-old Ivan is terrified by, yet drawn to, a beautiful woman frozen in time in the middle of the primordial forest of Russia. More than a decade later, he returns to rescue this princess. Ivan is drawn back into the princess's time and finds that he has no skills useful in the ninth century, yet must find a way to defeat the witch Baba Yaga.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (Adult Fiction)
Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with an interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes.
Grendel by John Gardner (Adult Fiction)
Grendel is "the first and most terrifying monster in the English language." In the Old English epic Beowulf, the hero slays a half-human creature who arises from the depths of the sea every night to terrorize the Danes, then pursues his enraged mother to her lair at the bottom of the ocean and kills her. Gardner's masterwork retells the story from the monster's point of view, offering a revealing view of humanity.
Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher by Lenore Hart (Adult Fiction)
Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was “Mark Twain,” when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom’s childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain’s novel.
The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey (Science Fiction / Fantasy)
Lackey presents a retelling of Sleeping Beauty set in Edwardian England, where Marina Roeswood is sent to live with her aunt after the deaths of her birth parents and finds herself the target of an evil that has been stalking her for her entire life. Also try: The Black Swan (Swan Lake), The Fairy Godmother (Cinderella), and The Serpent’s Shadow (Snow White).
Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Adult Fiction)
In Maguire’s Oz, Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked; nor is she a formally schooled witch. Instead she’s an insecure, unfortunately green Munchkinlander who is willing to take radical steps to unseat the tyrannical Wizard of Oz. Also try Maguire’s other re-told fairy tales, including Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and Mirror, Mirror.
The Preservationist by David Maine (Adult Fiction)
Using just a few chapters from Genesis as his base, Maine fleshes out the story of Noah and his ark, making it both realistic – with touches of wry humor – and wondrous. Maine’s Noe is an old man, implacable in believing in Yahweh’s righteousness even while he is plagued by dreadful dreams. His story is told in the third person, in chapters alternating with first-person accounts by his family members – the unnamed wife and three sons and daughters-in-law.
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
A beautiful retelling of the European "Swans" fairy tale and a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss and terror. Also try Son of the Shadows and Child of the Prophecy.
Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig (Adult Fiction)
Margaret Mitchell was so unnerved by the persistence of her novel's devotees that she reportedly vowed to never write another word. McCaig’s fully authorized prequel, sequel and companion to the classic story of spitfire, nostalgia and a South swept away by Sherman's army shows readers many of the same events, but this time from Rhett’s perspective, along with insight into the story of his background and upbringing, as well.
Deerskin by Robin McKinley (Science Fiction / Fantasy)
Heir to her late mother's legendary beauty, Princess Lissar becomes the victim of her grief-maddened father's desire. Fleeing her home, she seeks solace and solitude in a great forest – and discovers a magic that leads her toward healing and justice. Loosely based on an old fairy tale: Donkeyskin. Also try Beauty.
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Adult Fiction)
Here is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. In the novel she struggled with for years, Rhys brings to life the madwoman in the attic who burns down Rochester's home. Antoinette Cosway is a Creole woman married to an Englishman she doesn't know and wrenched from the only home she has ever known, haunted by the ghosts of her past and the intensity of her husband's desire for her.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (Adult Fiction)
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their dog breeding farm in remote northern Wisconsin. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm – and into Edgar's mother's affections. Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires – spectacularly. If the family aspects of this novel sound familiar, that may be because William Shakespeare first used them in his play Hamlet.
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (Science Fiction / Fantasy)
Ever since Rebecca was a toddler, she and her older sisters had heard a unique version of Sleeping Beauty over and over again from their beloved grandmother, Gemma, who insists that she is Briar Rose. Alternating chapters advance the fairy tale and Rebecca's experiences in trying to fulfill her promise made on Gemma's death bed to find the castle in the sleeping woods, which Gemma leaves to Rebecca. Rebecca's investigation takes her to her grandmother's native Poland, from which emerges a tale of Nazi brutality, gas chambers, partisan activity, courage, guilt and love. (This title can also be found in our Young Adult area.)