Having trouble finding a book for this category? Here are some of our recommendations.
All the ever afters : the untold story of Cinderella's stepmother
Danielle Teller
2018
ISBN: 9780062798206
"In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous reimagining of a classic tale, told from the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella's "evil" stepmother. We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we? As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story. A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated from her family and forced into servitude as a laundress's apprentice when she is only ten years old. Using her wits and ingenuity, she escapes her tyrannical matron and makes her way toward a hopeful future. When teenaged Agnes is seduced by an older man and becomes pregnant, she is transformed by love for her child. Once again left penniless, Agnes has no choice but to return to servitude at the manor she thought she had left behind. Her new position is nursemaid to Ella, an otherworldly infant. She struggles to love the child who in time becomes her stepdaughter and, eventually, the celebrated princess who embodies everyone's unattainable fantasies. The story of their relationship reveals that nothing is what it seems, that beauty is not always desirable, and that love can take on many guises. Lyrically told, emotionally evocative, and brilliantly perceptive, All the Ever Afters explores the hidden complexities that lie beneath classic tales of good and evil, all the while showing us that how we confront adversity reveals a more profound, and ultimately more important, truth than the ideal of "happily ever after.""-- Provided by publisher.
Boy, snow, bird : a novel
Helen Oyeyemi
2014
ISBN: 9781594631399
"A reimagining of the Snow White story set in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Clockwork fairy tales : a collection of steampunk fairy tales
edited by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett
2013
ISBN: 9780451464941
"Fairy tales turn steampowered in this collection of short stories by some of today's best science fiction and fantasy authors including: Jay Lake - Sleeping Beauty (Charles Perrault) Kat Richardson - The Tinderbox (Hans Christian Anderson) Paul Di Filippo - The King of the Gold Mountain (The Brothers Grimm) K. W. Jeter - The Red Shoes (Hans Christian Anderson) Steven Harper - Baba Yaga (Russian folk tale) Philippa Balantine - The Wild Swans (Hans Christian Anderson) And more"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Fairy tale : a novel
Stephen King
2022
ISBN: 9781668002179
"Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher--for that world or ours"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Children into swans : fairy tales and the pagan imagination
Jan Beveridge
2014
ISBN: 9780773543942
"Fairy tales are alive with the supernatural - elves, dwarfs, fairies, giants, and trolls, as well as witches with magic wands and sorcerers who cast spells and enchantments. Children into Swans examines these motifs in a range of ancient stories. Moving from the rich period of nineteenth-century fairy tales back as far as the earliest folk literature of northern Europe, Jan Beveridge shows how long these supernatural features have been a part of storytelling, with ancient tales, many from Celtic and Norse mythology, that offer glimpses into a remote era and a pre-Christian sensibility. The earliest stories often show significant differences from what we might expect. Elves mingle with Norse gods, dwarfs belong to a proud clan of magician-smiths, and fairies are shape-shifters emerging from the hills and the sea mist. In story traditions with roots in a pre-Christian imagination, an invisible other world exists alongside our own. From the lost cultures of a thousand years ago, Children into Swans opens the door on some of the most extraordinary worlds ever portrayed in literature - worlds that are both starkly beautiful and full of horrors."--Publisher's description.
Six-gun Snow White
Catherynne M. Valente
2013
ISBN: 9781596065529
A retelling of "Snow White" set in the "gritty gun-slinging west."
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library and audiobook always available on hoopla.
Tangled up in you
Christina Lauren
2024
ISBN: 9781368100649
"Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: Read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she's read, Ren has never found one that's taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning. Fitz has the rest of his life mapped out: Graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He's a few short months from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz's plan is in jeopardy. But a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they're thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire on a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realize that, maybe, the key to the dreams they've both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time"-- Provided by publisher.
Audiobook always available on hoopla.
The Beast's heart
Leife Shallcross
2019
ISBN: 9780440001775
"A retelling of Beauty and the Beast in which Beast struggles to come to terms with his horrid behavior as a man, his years of savagery, and his hope of redemption"-- Provided by publisher.