I watched the movie Clueless countless times before I found out that it’s based on Jane Austen’s Emma. This revelation completely blew my mind and made reading Emma a much richer experience. Retellings are a chance to explore familiar stories and beloved characters from a different angle, whether the retelling modernizes Shakespeare, looks at Frankenstein from a side character’s point of view, turns Sherlock Holmes into Charlotte Holmes, or sets Pride and Prejudice in a fantasy world with dragons.
If contemplating classic retellings sounds good to you, there is a list below. Or if you want to read the originals first, consider joining our new classic literature lunchtime book club. You can give us a call, stop by the library, or attend our introductory meeting at 12:00pm this Thursday, July 18.
Shakespeare
- The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson (Much Ado About Nothing)
- Exit Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston (The Winter’s Tale)
- Warm Bodies by Issac Marion (Romeo and Juliet)
- Fool by Christopher Moore (King Lear)
- As I Descended by Robin Talley (Macbeth)
- Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (The Taming of the Shrew)
- The Steep & Thorny Way by Cat Winters (Hamlet)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
- Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
- Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin
- Unmarriagable by Soniah Kamal
- Heartstone by Elle Katherine White
- Pride by Ibi Zoboi
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Frankenstein: Prodigal Son by Dean Koontz
- This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee
- The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro
- Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
- Death Cloud by Andrew Lane
- Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon by Larry Millett
- A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
- Splintered by A. G. Howard
- A Blade So Black by L. L. McKinney
- Heartless by Marissa Meyer
More Retellings
- Going Bovine by Libba Bray (Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)
- Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling)
- We Are the Perfect Girl by Ariel Kaplan (Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand)
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire (The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum)
- Circe by Madeline Miller (The Odyssey by Homer)
- Sometimes We Tell the Truth by Kim Zarins (The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer)
-Emily
