Old Tales Worth Revisiting

Looking for something new yet familiar? Try one of these contemporary novels – each author starts with a well known plot, and then updates or retells the story for a modern audience:

 

Re Jane
by Patricia Park

Jane Re, half-Korean, half-American orphan, has been trying to escape Flushing, Queens her whole life. Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter.
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte

 

 

Great
by Sara Benincasa

In this contemporary retelling of The Great Gatsby, seventeen-year-old Naomi Rye becomes entangled in the drama of a Hamptons social circle and a tragedy that shakes the summer community.
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

 

Catherine
by April Lindner

In this retelling of “Wuthering Heights,” Catherine explains how she fell in love with a brooding musician and left her family to return to him, and her daughter describes searching for her mother many years later.
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte

 

 

 

For Darkness Shows the Stars
by Diana Peterfreund

Told partially through secret letters between forbidden childhood friends, this novel is a postapocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Four years earlier, Elliot refused to elope with Kai, a mechanical prodigy and descendant of the Reduced. Now he’s back as Capt. Malakai Wentforth, flirting with Elliot’s pretty neighbor and being savage to Elliott.
“Persuasion” by Jane Austen

 

 

 

Going Bovine
by Libba Bray

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob’s (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.
“Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes

 

 

 

The Meursault Investigation
by Kamel Daoud, translated by John Cullen

Harum is the brother of “the Arab,” killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus’s classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling’s memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name – Musa – and describes the events that led to Musa’s casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.
“The Stranger” by Albert Camus

 

 

 

The Flight of Gemma Hardy
by Margot Livesey

Overcoming a life of hardship and loneliness, Gemma Hardy, a brilliant and determined young woman, accepts a position as an au pair on the remote Orkney Islands where she faces her biggest challenge yet.
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte

 

 

 

Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
by Jody Gherman

Sixteen-year-olds Geena, Hero, and Amber spend the summer working at a Sonoma, California coffee shop, where they experience romance, identity crises, and newfound friendships.
“Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare

 

 

 

Moonrise
by Cassandra King

Helen Honeycutt has a difficult time fitting in with her new husband’s friends. When she stumbles upon the secret of her predecessor’s death, she must decide if she can ever love again.
“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier