Spinning Silver


Naomi Novik - 2018
    Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk--grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh--Miryem's fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar. But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love. Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.

Winterspell


Claire Legrand - 2014
    Clara Stole, the mayor’s ever-proper daughter, leads a double life. Since her mother’s murder, she has secretly trained in self-defense with the mysterious Drosselmeyer.Then, on Christmas Eve, disaster strikes.Her home is destroyed, her father abducted—by beings distinctly not human. To find him, Clara journeys to the war-ravaged land of Cane. Her only companion is the dethroned prince Nicholas, bound by a wicked curse. If they’re to survive, Clara has no choice but to trust him, but his haunted eyes burn with secrets—and a need she can’t define. With the dangerous, seductive faery queen Anise hunting them, Clara soon realizes she won’t leave Cane unscathed—if she leaves at all.Inspired by The Nutcracker, Winterspell is a dark, timeless fairy tale about love and war, longing and loneliness, and a girl who must learn to live without fear.

Ember


Bettie Sharpe - 2007
    They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.Novella / 32,000 wordsWarning: This story contains sex, violence, and naughty words.It’s based on a fairytale, but it isn’t for kids.

Red as Blood and White as Bone


Theodora Goss - 2016
    Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss is a dark fantasy about a kitchen girl obsessed with fairy tales, who upon discovering a ragged woman outside the castle during a storm, takes her in--certain she’s a princess in disguise.

The Sleeper and the Spindle


Neil Gaiman - 2013
    On the eve of her wedding, a young queen sets out to rescue a princess from an enchantment. She casts aside her fine wedding clothes, takes her chain mail and her sword and follows her brave dwarf retainers into the tunnels under the mountain towards the sleeping kingdom. This queen will decide her own future – and the princess who needs rescuing is not quite what she seems. Twisting together the familiar and the new, this perfectly delicious, captivating and darkly funny tale shows its creators at the peak of their talents.Lavishly produced, packed with glorious Chris Riddell illustrations enhanced with metallic ink, this is a spectacular and magical gift.

Stolen Enchantress


Amber Argyle - 2018
    An enchantress. An unbreakable curse . . .When her little sister is taken by the beast of the Forbidden Forest, Larkin does the unthinkable: she goes in after her.Deep within the sentient woods, Larkin uncovers a secret that puts her in dreadful danger. Worse, now that the beast has had his taste, he’ll never stop hunting her. But the forest has woken something inside Larkin; something that gives her the power to fight back. Magic.Using forbidden magic will get Larkin hanged. Not using it will leave her at the mercy of the beast's enchantment. But there’s a third option; one that scares her more than anything.She could fall in love with the beast. Fans of A CURSE SO DARK AND LONELY and A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES will be spellbound by the fairytale retelling of Beauty and the Beast and The Pied Piper in Stolen Enchantress. One-click now to find out why readers around the world are getting lost in the Forbidden Forest! “Moody, whimsical, & enchanting.” - Emily R. King, author of The Hundredth Queen Series OTHER TITLES BY AMBER ARGYLEForbidden Forest SeriesLady of ShadowsStolen EnchantressPiper PrinceWraith KingCurse QueenFairy Queens SagaOf Ice and SnowWinter QueenOf Fire and AshSummer QueenOf Sand and StormDaughter of WinterWinter’s HeirWitch Song SeriesWitch SongWitch BornWitch RisingWitch Fall

Dragon Rose


Christine Pope - 2012
    Rhianne Menyon has dreams of being a painter, but her world changes forever when a single moment of sacrifice brings her to Black's Keep as the Dragon's latest Bride. As she attempts to adjust to her new life -- and to know something of the monster who is now her husband -- she begins to see that the curse is far crueler than she first believed. Unraveling the mystery of what happened to the Dragon's Brides is only the beginning...

Spindle Fire


Lexa Hillyer - 2017
    A princess sleeps. This is no fairy tale.It all started with the burning of the spindles.No.It all started with a curse…Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood—and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape…or the reason for her to stay.

The Ugly Stepsister


Aya Ling - 2015
    To get back, she'll have to complete the story, right to the end of happily ever after. But the odds are huge: the other stepsister is drop-dead gorgeous, the fairy godmother is nowhere to be found, and the prince, despite being insanely hot, openly dislikes balls. Can she ever return to the modern world?

Beastkeeper


Cat Hellisen - 2015
    Her mother hates the cold, so every few months her parents pack their bags and drag her off after the sun. She’s grown up lonely and longing for magic. She doesn’t know that it’s magic her parents are running from. When Sarah’s mother walks out on their family, all the strange old magic they have tried to hide from comes rising into their mundane world. Her father begins to change into something wild and beastly, but before his transformation is complete, he takes Sarah to her grandparents—people she has never met, didn’t even know were still alive. Deep in the forest, in a crumbling ruin of a castle, Sarah begins to untangle the layers of curses affecting her family bloodlines, until she discovers that the curse has carried over to her, too. The day she falls in love for the first time, Sarah will transform into a beast . . . unless she can figure out a way to break the curse forever.

Cinder and Ella


Melissa Lemon - 2011
    But it isn't long before her sister Ella is brought to the castle herself. What Ella finds there starts a quest that will change her life and the entire kingdom. Cinder and Ella is a Cinderella story like no other, and one you'll never forget.

A Pocketful of Crows


Joanne M. Harris - 2017
    Following the seasons, A Pocketful of Crows balances youth and age, wisdom and passion and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless wild girl.Only love could draw her into the world of named, tamed things. And it seems only revenge will be powerful enough to let her escape.Beautifully illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, this is a stunning and original modern fairytale.

The Cold Is in Her Bones


Peternelle van Arsdale - 2019
    She is never allowed to travel to the village and her only friend is her beloved older brother, Niklas. When a bright-eyed girl named Iris comes to stay, Milla hopes her loneliness might finally be coming to an end. But Iris has a secret she's forbidden to share: The village is cursed by a demon who possesses girls at random, and the townspeople live in terror of who it will come for next.Now, it seems, the demon has come for Iris. When Iris is captured and imprisoned with other possessed girls, Milla leaves home to rescue her and break the curse forever. Her only company on the journey is a terrible new secret of her own: Milla is changing, too, and may soon be a demon herself.The Cold Is in Her Bones is a novel about the dark, reverberating power of pain, the yearning to be seen and understood, and the fragile optimism of love.

The Glass Casket


McCormick Templeman - 2014
    But that changes one bleak morning, when five horses and their riders thunder into her village and through the forest, disappearing into the hills. Days later, the riders' bodies are found, and though no one can say for certain what happened in their final hours, their remains prove that whatever it was must have been brutal.   Rowan's village was once a tranquil place, but now things have changed. Something has followed the path those riders made and has come down from the hills, through the forest, and into the village. Beast or man, it has brought death to Rowan's door once again.   Only this time, its appetite is insatiable.A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick[STAR] "With stylish prose, richly developed characters and well-realized worldbuilding, Templeman plumbs archetypes of folklore to create a compelling blend of mythic elements and realistic teen experience."-Kirkus Reviews, Starred[STAR] "This has both the stylish beauty of those [classic fairy] tales and the chilling darkness that makes them timeless."-The Bulletin, Starred“The legion of Maggie Stiefvater fans out there ought to look this way.”- Booklist

The Maiden Thief


Melissa Marr - 2016
    Her father blames her when one of her sisters is one of the taken.