30 Modern Twists on the Fairy Tales You Know and Love

A reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, Gregory Maguire's Wicked — the novel that inspired the hit Broadway musical — tells the backstory of the villainous Wicked Witch of the West and reveals her kinder side.

A young king takes a new bride each night, and by morning she is dead — that is, until one woman volunteers herself as his next victim with the intention of luring him in with stories, then killing him in order to put a stop to his practice. In the page-turning YA romance The Wrath and the Dawn, author Renée Ahdieh draws from the story of One Thousand and One Nights to create a tale of danger, magic, mystery, and love.

When a young woman is left to live with her cruel stepmother and evil stepsisters, she seeks an escape from her reality — but though it first seems to come in the form of a handsome (and magical) man, Malinda Lo's novel Ash takes an unexpected turn when this Cinderella-inspired character finds comfort in the arms of a female hunter.

Sheri S. Tepper's modern fantasy Beauty at first glance is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty (though Cinderella, Snow White, and more make appearances), but the novel — which follows Beauty as she travels to the future — is really a story about the strength of women, the importance of nature, and the path to finding one's place in the world.

In Marissa Meyer's first installment of the popular YA series The Lunar Chronicles, Cinder, a futuristic steampunk twist is put on the familiar tale of one girl's struggle with her evil stepmother and her path to find her prince.

If you haven't read the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses, then catch up on that first, then read Genevieve Valentine's reimagining of the story with The Girls at the Kingfisher Club — where the princesses are swapped for dancing flappers in the vibrant Roaring Twenties.

Robin McKinley's Beauty is a modern retelling of the classic story of two people falling in love despite their differences.

Good witches are deceiving, wicked witches might really be heroes, and the yellow-brick road is crumbling. Why is Oz in such disarray? In Danielle Paige's Dorothy Must Die, the pigtailed girl we knew and loved has let power go to her head, and the only way to save Oz is to eliminate the problem: Dorothy.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi is a groundbreaking retelling of a beloved story that "brilliantly recasts the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity."

Famous fantasy author Anne Rice takes things up a notch in an erotic take on a fairy tale. In The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, it takes a little bit more action than just a kiss to wake Beauty up, and the Prince's resulting reward for his help is her complete servitude to him.

Briar Rose is a heartbreaking retelling of Sleeping Beauty that links the titular character's moving story to the Holocaust and her grandmother's past.

September Girls by Bennett Madison is a modern-day take on The Little Mermaid, but in the form of a coming-of-age novel about first love, sibling relationships, and, of course, mermaids.

Since her father's death, Xing Xing has been reduced to the status of a slave girl, and she embarks on a journey to find a remedy for her stepmother's affliction. In Bound, Donna Jo Napoli's Chinese Cinderella story, a young girl's eyes are opened as she travels far from home and experiences life like she never has before.

In Cameron Dokey's Before Midnight, a young boy and young girl, abandoned by their parents and raised together by servants, are faced with trials that will test their relationship as they grow older and face new foes.

Cress is the third installment of Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles, where Cinder rescues Cress, a girl who has been trapped not in a tower like Rapunzel but on a satellite since childhood, in order to carry out a mission that they can only hope to complete as a team.

Neil Gaiman, modern master of all things magical, collaborated with Chris Riddell for a beautifully illustrated take on Snow White's and Sleeping Beauty's stories. The Sleeper and the Spindle blends elements of the two fairy tales into a thrilling new version of both.

What if you could hear the story of Beauty and the Beast from a different perspective? Alex Flinn's Beastly is told by a teenage boy whose perfect life is turned upside down when a witch casts a spell that disfigures his face.

A young girl has trained her whole life to kill the evil ruler she is betrothed to, yet when she finally meets him, she finds it hard to fulfill her duty in light of her developing feelings for him. In Rosamund Hodge's Cruel Beauty, the story of Beauty and the Beast is retold as a romantic fantasy that mixes elements of Greek mythology and classic fairy tales.

A Ukrainian-born American graduate student is transported back in time and stumbles upon the figure of a sleeping woman. In Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, the story of Sleeping Beauty is retold with elements of Russian mythology and the modern-day weaved in.

When a handsome man falls off a pier, an ocean nymph and a land-dwelling girl save his life. The two women form a friendship but find themselves both competing for the man — and in Jackson Pearce's The Little Mermaid-inspired YA novel Fathomless, the stakes are pretty high.

The Gates of Sleep, a play on Sleeping Beauty, is just one of Mercedes Lackey's fairy-tale-inspired novels in the Elemental Masters series. The author's collections include stories inspired by Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Little Mermaid, and more.

Perfect for lovers of dark fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things is a thrilling story about a boy who escapes his own harsh reality only to find himself in a dangerous world of heroes, monsters, and magic.

Tinker Bell narrates Jodi Lynn Anderson's reimagining of J. M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan, which follows titular character Tiger Lily's tale as she desperately tries to hold on to the boy she loves after he meets another girl . . . named Wendy Darling.

Gregory Maguire's talent for reimagining fairy tales is confirmed once again with Mirror Mirror, a take on Snow White unlike any other.

Sarah Pinborough's Poison maintains the story of Snow White but with a sexier twist.

A unique retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's beloved The Little Mermaid, Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale is not just a love story, but a story about two princesses — one human and one a mermaid — with everything to lose.

For generations, a town has kept a werewolf at bay by offering it a monthly sacrifice, but in Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's Red Riding Hood, they are shocked to discover that the monster lives among them.

In a book that feels like a combination of A Game of Thrones and Grimm's fairy tales, Stacey Jay's action-packed novel Princess of Thorns is an adventurous tale of Princess Aurora, daughter of Sleeping Beauty, as she attempts to break the curse that prevents her from falling in love.

Cloaked in red and armed with a hatchet, Scarlett is on the hunt for the wolf who took her eye when she defended her sister, Rosie, against him. In Jackson Pearce's Little Red Riding Hood-inspired novel Sisters Red, the two girls band together to bring down werewolves, but they find that there is often more to a man, or wolf, than meets the eye.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone is woven into the story of Snow White in Tanith Lee's dark interpretation, White as Snow.