Classics Retold

Classic novels rewritten for modern audiences and introduced to new generations of readers.
Updated September 19, 2022
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Circe : a novel
Miller, Madeline
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
Jalaluddin, Uzma
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
Oyeyemi, Helen.
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 : a novel
Smith, Zadie
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." --Kirkus Reviews ...
Loosely based on E.M. Forster's Howard's End, set in modern day U.K.
The hours
Cunningham, Michael
A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author ofA Home at the End of the WorldandFlesh and Blood. InThe Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia...
Three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by Mrs Dalloway.
Eligible : a novel
Sittenfeld, Curtis.
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 : a novel
Maguire, Gregory.
A special 25th anniversary hardcover edition of the multi-million-copy-bestselling novel and basis of the Tony Award-winning musical. This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire's breathtaking New York...
An exploration of the characters & setting of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
The daughter of Doctor Moreau : a novel
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia
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 : a novel
Fielding, Helen
The iconic #1 bestseller by Helen Fielding and basis for the films starring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey and Emma Thompson.  Bridget Jones's Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud account of a year in the life of a thirty-something...
Roughly based on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
Pride and prejudice and zombies
Austen, Jane
The New York Times best seller is now a major motion picture starring Lily James and Sam Riley, with Matt Smith, Charles Dance, and Lena Headey.    This movie tie-in edition features sixteen pages of color stills from the film, a reading group...
Inspired, of course, by Pride & Prejudice.
Sansei and sensibility
Yamashita, Karen Tei
In these buoyant and inventive stories, Karen Tei Yamashita transfers classic tales across boundaries and questions what an inheritance--familial, cultural, emotional, artistic--really means. In a California of the sixties and seventies, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives'...
Inspired, of course, by Sense & Sensibility.
Pride
Ibi Zoboi
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
Meyer, Marissa.
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
Miller, Madeline.
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
Fforde, Jasper.
Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and...
Set in an alternative 1985, where the protagonist pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
Meg & Jo
Kantra, Virginia
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 : a confession
Faye, Lyndsay.
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.
Tiger Lily
Jodi Lynn Anderson
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...
By the book : a novel
Sonneborn, Julia
An English professor struggling for tenure discovers that her ex-fiancé has just become the president of her college--and her new boss--in this whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen's classic Persuasion. Anne Corey is about to get schooled. An English...
A modern day version of Jane Austen's Persuasion.
The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood returns with a shrewd, funny, and insightful retelling of the myth of Odysseus from the point of view of Penelope. Describing her own remarkable vision, the author writes in the foreword, "I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged...
New boy
Chevalier, Tracy.
Tracy Chevalier brings Shakespeare's Othello--a harrowing drama of jealousy and revenge--to a 1970s era elementary school playground.  Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, diplomat's son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day-...
A play on Shakespeare's Othello set in the 70s on a school playground.
I, Iago
Galland, Nicole.
"Nicole Galland is exceptionally well versed in the fine nuances of storytelling." --St. Petersburg Times "Galland has an exceptional gift." --Neal Stephenson The critically acclaimed author of The Fool's Tale, Nicole Galland now approaches...
Nutshell : a novel
McEwan, Ian.
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
Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eve view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known...
Fool
Christopher Moore
"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
Brooks, Geraldine.
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
Rhys, Jean.
Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon the publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Set in the Caribbean, its heroine is Antoinette Cosway, a...
A feminist prequel to Jane Eyre
Mr. Rochester
Shoemaker, Sarah
"A CRACKING-GOOD READ!"-- People, Best New Books A deft and irresistible retelling of Charlotte Bronte´s beloved classic Jane Eyre--from the point of view of the dashing, mysterious Mr. Rochester himself. For 170 years, Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature...
The other Bennet sister : a novel
Hadlow, Janice
A NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Jane fans rejoice! . . . Exceptional storytelling and a true delight." --Helen Simonson, author of the New York Times bestselling novels Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and The Summer Before the War<...
Longbourn
Baker, Jo.
* 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.
Emma : a modern retelling
McCall Smith, Alexander
The best-selling author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series deftly escorts Jane Austen's beloved, meddlesome heroine into the twenty-first century in this delightfully inventive retelling.   The summer after university, Emma Woodhouse returns home to the village of Highbury...
Frankissstein : a love story
Winterson, Jeanette
Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as "one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time" (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love...
Frankenstein in Baghdad : a novel
Sa℗ dawi, A℗ mad
*International Booker Prize finalist* "Brave and ingenious." --The New York Times "Gripping, darkly humorous . . . profound." --Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment "Extraordinary . . . A...
Home fire : [a novel]
Shamsie, Kamila
"Ingenious... Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century." --The New York Times WINNER OF THE 2018 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE 2019 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLISTED FOR...
A retelling of Sophocles's Antigone set among British Muslims.
Medea : a modern retelling
Wolf, Christa.
Medea is among the most notorious women in the canon of Greek tragedy: a woman scorned who sacrifices her own children to her jealous rage. In her gripping new novel, Christa Wolf explodes this myth, revealing a fiercely independent woman ensnared in a brutal political battle. Medea, driven by her...
An exploration of Greek mythology's Medea.
Lavinia
Le Guin, Ursula K.
In a richly imagined, beautiful new novel, an acclaimed writer gives an epic heroine her voice InThe Aeneid, Vergil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin...
An imagining of the life of Lavinia, a minor character in Virgil's Aeneid.
Girl meets boy : the myth of Iphis
Smith, Ali
Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But in Whitbread winner Ali Smith's lyrical, funny, mash-up of Ovid's most joyful gender-bending metamorphosis story, girl meets boy in so many more ways than one. Imogen and Anthea, sisters that are opposites, work together at Pure, a creative...
Based on Ovid's story "Iphis and Ianthe" from his Metamorphoses.
Alice
Henry, Christina
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...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.