Classics Retold

Classic novels rewritten for modern audiences and introduced to new generations of readers.
Updated September 19, 2022
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Circe
Madeline Miller
Paper Book
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,...
The fleshed-out story of Circe, a character from the Odyssey.
Ayesha at Last
Uzma Jalaluddin
Paper Book
As seen on The Today Show! One of the best summer romance picks! One of Publishers Weekly Best Romance Books of 2019! A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of...
A modern day Muslim Pride & Prejudice
Boy, Snow, Bird
Helen Oyeyemi
Paper Book
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...
The reimagined story of Snow White set in 1950s America.
On Beauty
Zadie Smith
Paper Book
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was....
Loosely based on E.M. Forster's Howard's End, set in modern day U.K.
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that became a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his...
Three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by Mrs Dalloway.
Eligible
Curtis Sittenfeld
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Wonderfully tender and hilariously funny, Eligible both honors and updates Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Tackling gender, class, courtship, and family, Curtis Sittenfeld reaffirms herself as one of the most dazzling authors writing today....
A modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Gregory Maguire
Paper Book
This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire's breathtakingNew York Times bestseller
An exploration of the characters & setting of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a lavish historical drama reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. "This is...
A reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set in nineteenth-century Mexico.
Bridget Jones's Diary
Helen Fielding
Paper Book
"130 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds overnight? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier (repulsive, horrifying notion)); alcohol units 2 (excellent) cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow); number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but...
Roughly based on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
Pride
Ibi Zoboi
Paper Book
In a timely update of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi skillfully balances cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in her vibrant reimagining of this beloved classic. A smart, funny, gorgeous...
A retelling of Pride & Prejudice set in Brooklyn with a much more diverse cast of characters than the original.
Cinder
Marissa Meyer
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times Bestselling Series! Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth's fate hinges on one girl. . ....
A futuristic retelling of Cinderella.
The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller "At once a scholar's homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art....A book I could not put down." --Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House A thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the...
Homer's Iliad as told from the perspective of the character Patroclus.
The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde
Ebook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The first novel in the renowned Thursday Next series, which "combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (The Wall Street Journal). "A literary wonderland [that] recalls...
Set in an alternative 1985, where the protagonist pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
Meg and Jo
Virginia Kantra
Paper Book
A heartwarming modern novel inspired by Little Women, to coincide with the release of the new film in early 2020.
A modern retelling of Little Women.
Jane Steele
Lyndsay Faye
Paper Book
Nominated for the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel The reimagining of Jane Eyre as a gutsy, heroic serial killer that The New York Times Book Review calls "wonderfully entertaining" and USA Today describes as "sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety."  <...
A reimagining of Jane Eyre as a serial killer.
Ophelia
Lisa Klein
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! If you think you know Ophelia and Hamlet's story, think again... "A spellbinding tale of love, murder, and revenge." -- VOYA As ambitious and witty as she is beautiful, Ophelia is quick to catch the eye of the...
Tiger Lily
Jodi Lynn Anderson
Paper Book
In this stunning reimagining of J. M. Barrie's beloved classic Peter Pan, New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson expertly weaves a gripping tale of love, loss, and adventure. When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan...
Nutshell
Ian McEwan
Paper Book
New from the bestselling author of Atonement and The Children Act Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home--a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse--but John's not there. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude,...
The story of Hamlet narrated by a fetus in his mother's womb.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Tom Stoppard
Paper Book
Fool
Christopher Moore
Paper Book
"Hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters, and ministerial students." --Dallas Morning News Fool--the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore--is a hilarious new take on...
The story of King Lear's Fool
March
Geraldine Brooks
Paper Book
As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched...
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys
Paper Book
The fortieth anniversary reissue of the best-selling "tour de force" (Walter Allen, New York Times Book Review).
A feminist prequel to Jane Eyre
Longbourn
Jo Baker
Paper Book
* Pride and Prejudice was only half the story *   If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she'd most likely be a sight more careful with them.   In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs...
A story of the lives of the servants at Longbourn, the house of the Bennetts in Pride & Prejudice.
Lavinia
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ebook
"A transporting novel told in the voice of a girl Virgil left in the margins. It is an absorbing, reverent, magnificent story." --Cleveland Plain Dealer National Book Award-winning literary legend Ursula K. Le Guin reimagines Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid through the eyes and...
An imagining of the life of Lavinia, a minor character in Virgil's Aeneid.
Alice
Christina Henry
Ebook
From the national bestselling author of Ghost Tree comes a mind-bending novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll... In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which...
The Ballad of Black Tom
Victor LaValle
Paper Book
One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic...
A retelling H. P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook" from the viewpoint of a black man.

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