Best Novels Retold from a Different Character's Point of ViewLike this list

19 items

• Fagin the Thief

  Epstein, Allison,

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  Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• James

  Everett, Percival,

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  This retelling of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Other Bennet Sister

  Hadlow, Janice,

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  What if Mary Bennet's life took a different path from that sad future laid out for her in "Pride and Prejudice?" What if the frustrated intellectual of the Bennet family, the marginalized middle daughter, the plain girl who takes refuge in her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Fair Rosaline

  Solomons, Natasha,

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  The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love. Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo's attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and charming stranger…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Wide Sargasso Sea

  Rhys, Jean,

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  In Charlotte Bronte’s "Jane Eyre," Mr. Rochester’s plans to marry Jane are frustrated by the revelation that the long-suffering man is already married and in fact, his mad wife is locked in the attic. But what is her story? And if she is ‘mad’, how…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Wicked

  the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West : a Novel

  Maguire, Gregory,

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  Years before Dorothy and Toto crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin-no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Song of Achilles

  Miller, Madeline,

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  This epic retelling of the Iliad from the point of view of Patroclus, an awkward young prince who follows Achilles into war. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath. They are trained by the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Mycroft Holmes

  Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 1947-

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  Fresh out of Cambridge University, the young Mycroft Holmes is already making a name for himself in government, working for the Secretary of State for War. Yet this most British of civil servants has strong ties to the faraway island of Trinidad,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• March

  Brooks, Geraldine,

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  From Louisa May Alcott's classic "Little Women," Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, Mr. March, who has gone off to war leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. In Brooks's telling, Mr. March emerges as an…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Longbourn

  Baker, Jo,

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  In this irresistibly imagined below-stairs answer to "Pride and Prejudice," the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Grendel

  Gardner, John,

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  The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Lady Macbeth

  Reid, Ava,

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  Reid reinvents Shakespeare's classic tragedy with a captivating blend of intrigue and powerful magic. Teenaged noblewoman Roscille leaves behind everything she knows in France and enters into a precarious marriage to the much older Lord Macbeth. Her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Julia

  Newman, Sandra, 1965-

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  It's 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen -…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Palace of Illusions

  Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, 1956-

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  A reimagining of the world-famous Indian epic, the Mahabharat—told from the point of view of an amazing woman, princess Panchaali, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Renfield

  Slave of Dracula

  Hambly, Barbara,

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  The servant Renfield was the most enigmatic character to stalk in the shadows of Dracula. Now he takes center stage in an ingenious re-imagining of Bram Stoker's classic novel that explores the chilling circumstances of his insane devotion to the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• While Beauty Slept

  Blackwell, Elizabeth Canning,

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  "I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told." And so begins Elise Dalriss’s Gothic retelling behind the legend of Sleeping Beauty. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel’s tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Ahab's Wife Or, The Star-gazer

  Naslund, Sena Jeter,

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  A rich epic, drawn from the classic Moby Dick, chronicles the life of Una Spenser, wife of the immortal Captain Ahab. After a spellbinding opening scene, the tale flashes back to Una's childhood in Kentucky; her idyllic adolescence with her aunt…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Stepsister

  Donnelly, Jennifer,

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  Isabelle should be blissfully happy -- she's about to win the handsome prince. Except Isabelle isn't the beautiful girl who lost the glass slipper and captured the prince's heart. She's the ugly stepsister who cut off her toes to fit into…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Penelopiad

  Atwood, Margaret, 1939-

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  Penelope has been immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. She secretly…Read moreRead more of this annotation