Here are 100 books that Vasilisa the Wise fans have personally recommended if you like
Vasilisa the Wise.
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I’ve always loved fairy tales, but it was only when I got to Leeds University that I discovered you could enjoy them as an adult. I remember enthusiastically signing up for the “Romance, Ballad and Fairy Tale” module with the inimitable Professor Wawn. I’m now a keen amateur folklorist with an ever-growing collection of books. I use them A LOT in my own writing, and enjoy connecting with my fellow enthusiasts, particularly at the Todmorden Folklore Centre, Yorkshire.
I’ve been a fan of Jen Campbell since first watching her YouTube channel.
She is very knowledgeable about fairy tales, and as a queer, disabled person, keen to challenge some of the genre’s othering tropes. (I’ve met her, too!). I especially like how Jen makes the Irish merman tale “The Souls Trapped Under the Sea” more obviously gay, but in a child-friendly way, and has the merman communicate underwater using sign language.
The book has a good selection of tales from across the continents, and the illustrations are just the right mix of creepy and cosy.
Fourteen of the most gruesome fairy tales from around the world are re-told for contemporary readers and restored to their original, grisly versions.
Jen Campbell's collection of terrifyingly gruesome tales lends a modern edge to fairy tale collections for young readers. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of fairy tale history, Campbell's stories undo the censoring, gender stereotyping and twee endings of more modern children's fairy tales, to return both classic and little-known stories to their grim versions, whilst celebrating a diverse range of characters.
Featuring 14 short stories from around the globe, The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers is…
Wishes are dangerous. They can bring you a night out, a gown, even a pair of slippers. Or something you never should have wished for in the first place.
After the royal wedding, the girl in the glass slippers has everything she ever wanted: an escape from a life of…
I’ve always loved fairy tales, but it was only when I got to Leeds University that I discovered you could enjoy them as an adult. I remember enthusiastically signing up for the “Romance, Ballad and Fairy Tale” module with the inimitable Professor Wawn. I’m now a keen amateur folklorist with an ever-growing collection of books. I use them A LOT in my own writing, and enjoy connecting with my fellow enthusiasts, particularly at the Todmorden Folklore Centre, Yorkshire.
I was recommended this book at a local festival of African and Caribbean culture, by a storyteller who performed two of the tales from it - with music!
I love it that the tales come from many countries in the Caribbean, and reflect the many cultures that have gone into its melting pot, including West African, Indian and Indigenous peoples.
Even better, I don’t just get the tales, I get to hear about the tellers. Between the stories are recollections of the Windrush Generation, who emigrated from the Caribbean to Britain in the 1950s and 60s. As a British reader, I really appreciate that.
Professional storyteller Wendy Shearer has gathered together stories from many Caribbean islands and countries, drawing on oral history and written texts to bring these folk tales to life. Many stories are of West African origin, kept alive through rhythm and song. These tales and their languages were blended with European and East Indian folklore, with royalty, heroes and spirits exacting revenge. Alongside the stories are newly collected reminiscences of migration to Britain from Caribbean countries during the Windrush years. These first-hand accounts mirror the themes found in the folk tales with love and loss, magic and mystery, caution and justice.
I’ve always loved fairy tales, but it was only when I got to Leeds University that I discovered you could enjoy them as an adult. I remember enthusiastically signing up for the “Romance, Ballad and Fairy Tale” module with the inimitable Professor Wawn. I’m now a keen amateur folklorist with an ever-growing collection of books. I use them A LOT in my own writing, and enjoy connecting with my fellow enthusiasts, particularly at the Todmorden Folklore Centre, Yorkshire.
I remember the excitement when the news broke in 2009 that five hundred previously unknown German fairy tales had been discovered in an archive in Bavaria.
I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And I still love it now. As an amateur folklorist, I like the unembellished rawness of the tales. It can be weird at times, but it brings me closer to the original tellers all those years ago.
And the little commentaries and notes on each tale, comparing them with similar tales and giving each their Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification number. Super helpful, both for studying and retelling the tales.
A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales - now for the first time in English.
With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales - the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen - becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schoenwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schoenwerth's work was lost - until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive.
Wishes are dangerous. They can bring you a night out, a gown, even a pair of slippers. Or something you never should have wished for in the first place.
After the royal wedding, the girl in the glass slippers has everything she ever wanted: an escape from a life of…
I’ve always loved fairy tales, but it was only when I got to Leeds University that I discovered you could enjoy them as an adult. I remember enthusiastically signing up for the “Romance, Ballad and Fairy Tale” module with the inimitable Professor Wawn. I’m now a keen amateur folklorist with an ever-growing collection of books. I use them A LOT in my own writing, and enjoy connecting with my fellow enthusiasts, particularly at the Todmorden Folklore Centre, Yorkshire.
As a Yorkshire lass, how could I not love a book of tales from my native soil and stones? I actually helped crowdfund this book, so was one of the first to read it.
I love that many of the tales are associated with real local places. I get very excited when it mentions somewhere I know well. I was especially happy to find a gender-reversed Rapunzel (or "Man In A Tower") story in here. You don’t normally get many of those.
A collection of rarely heard fairy tales from across Yorkshire, plus some local folklore. It has around fifty tales of dragons, giants, hobs, fairies, witches and other folk, or fairy, tales based in Yorkshire.
Most of these are unchanged, or with very minor changes, to the versions found in old (out of copyright) books, though I've tended to soften the dialect to make them easier to read. A few, however, have had slightly more significant changes as the older versions I found were a little brief, and I took a mixture of these and newer versions to retell the story.…
I’ve always had a soft spot for history—in particular, mysteries, myths, and legends. If it’s strange, unexplained, obscure, supernatural, or downright weird, I’m all in. And Celtic folklore, it turns out, excels at exploiting the dark intrigue of human antiquity. Backdropped by a landscape that makes literally anything seem impossible, these stories tell us as much about fairies, merfolk, and other mystical creatures as they do about ourselves. Like so many legends around the world, Celtic mythology is a mirror. One that exposes our deepest fantasies. Reflecting the dark, dangerous side of humanity’s desires back onto itself, and making us question who the real monsters really are.
Three sisters vanish as kids and mysteriously return with no memories of what happened and a lot of strange quirks… in other words, the perfect set-up for a modern story about changelings! Initially, I was skeptical about this one because—while I shamelessly loved Twilight back in the day—I’ve also been kinda burned out from all the froofy falling-in-love-with-magical-creatures/worlds books that surfaced in its aftermath. (And c’mon. That cover? It practically screams froofy tortured teen magic.)
But let’s just say the marketing team failed here because while this book was beautiful, it was also kinda rotten, incredibly atmospheric, and genuinely creepy in places. The perfect read for a dark, modern twist on a traditional myth.
'A gorgeous, grisly modern fairy tale.' - THE GUARDIAN
'Dark and delicious. House of Hollow hums with malice and mystery. I devoured it whole.' - KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE
** SHORTLISTED FOR THE YA BOOK PRIZE 2022 **
The Hollow sisters - Vivi, Grey and Iris - are as seductively glamorous as they are mysterious. They have black eyes and hair as white as milk. The Hollow sisters don't have friends - they don't need them. They move through the corridors like sharks, the other little fish parting around them, whispering behind their backs.
I never expected to write a zombie story, let alone a novella series. I don’t usually do scary. I avoid horror movies and choose books with pretty covers. I think that’s why my books, like those on this list, walk the line of horror without plunging all the way in. There’s a delight in being spooked, but not if it leads you to recurring nightmares. I want books that will set my heart racing, but don’t plant a lingering fear. The books on this list will raise the hair on your arms, but won’t keep you up at night…unless, of course, it’s because you can’t put them down.
Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for retellings, as you may have noticed since this book is the second retelling to make my list.
This book retells the 12 Dancing Princesses, exploring the family’s curse more in-depth. That means it’s filled with gothic settings, plenty of tragedy, and the requisite family secrets. It’s the perfect spooky story to keep you up all night (because you won’t be able to put it down).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Get swept away by this “haunting” (Bustle) YA novel about twelve beautiful sisters living on an isolated island estate who begin to mysteriously die one by one. This dark and atmospheric fairy tale inspired story is perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.
"Step inside a fairy tale." —Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Caraval
In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed.
Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of…
I’ve been reading Tolkien since I was seven years old, mumblety-mumble years in the distant past, but it wasn’t till much later that I got serious about reading critical works on Tolkien, and then turned to writing about him, myself. Twenty years ago, I published my first book on Tolkien. Since then, I’ve edited a number of essay collections, published many papers, consulted on the Hobbit movies, amassed a respectable personal library, and edited Mythlore, one of the major journals in the field of Tolkien studies, since 2006. My love of Tolkien has led me on many adventures and to deep and abiding friendships around the world!
Verlyn Flieger is the doyenne of Tolkien criticism, and this collection sees her at her best.
I’ve often found that her brilliance lies in pointing out what’s been hiding in plain sight–and once you have seen it, your view is forever changed. “But What Did He Really Mean?” and “Politically Incorrect Tolkien” are my favorites, but there are many gems here worth excavating.
Devoted to Tolkien, the teller of tales and co-creator of the myths they brush against, these essays focus on his lifelong interest in and engagement with fairy stories, the special world that he called faerie, a world they both create and inhabit, and with the elements that make that world the special place it is. They cover a range of subjects, from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and their place within the legendarium he called the Silmarillion to shorter works like "The Story of Kullervo" and "Smith of Wootton Major."
I don’t read books with explicit scenes, and I don’t write them either. I’ve read hundreds of novels in this genre and written several of my own. I believe closed-door romances can be just as tension-filled and fun as those with spice. I love the closed-door romance community and have a passion for sharing books that make me laugh, cry, and swoon.
I absolutely loved the way that Emma wrote these characters. I related to Seraphina and fell for Rafe’s charm time and time again. They’re a couple that’s perfect for each other.
Some book couples you read and think they may not make it past the last page, but I could see these two together forever. The whole book made me swoon and laugh.
I’m a fantasy author and mythologist who studies myth’s place in culture, history, and heritage conservation. To finish my doctorate, I moved from Seattle to Galway, Ireland and never left. Myth and folklore permeate the landscape around me as well as my day-to-day life. After grad school I returned to my first love, fiction, with all the knowledge and passion that came from the better part of a decade spent studying mythology. When I’m not writing, I spend my time exploring 5000-year-old tombs or practicing Fiore (14th century Italian sword fighting) with my husband. The Serpent and the Swan is the debut fairy tale in a much larger series.
Folklore and nature conservation is a subjects close to my heart. When I met my husband, an ecologist, many of our first conversations were on the importance of narrative to get people interested in conservation efforts. Folklore is the perfect tool.
This book does that job beautifully. As a piece of narrative nonfiction, it collects fairy tales, personal memoirs, and natural history in a lyrical journey through the forests of England. Maitland centers each chapter on an English woodland and the stories associated with it, be they fairy tales or history. More importantly, she discusses not only how myth shapes culture, but how landscape shapes myth. I reference it time and again not only as an academic, but as an author who creates worlds rich in landscape and folklore.
Fairytales are one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, and forests one of our most ancient landscapes. Both evoke a similar sensation in us - we find them beautiful and magical, but also spooky, sometimes horrifying.
In this fascinating book, Maitland argues that the two forms are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forests were both the background and the source of the fairytales made famous by the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen. Yet both forests and fairy stories are at risk and their loss deprives us of our cultural lifeblood. Maitland…
I have a passion for fairy tale stories especially ones for adults because they are often the first stories we learned as kids. The ability to look back at how we interpreted them and how our understanding changes over time and culture makes for something that is truly timeless, and therefore like a beloved trope is never the exact same thing twice. Each time only builds on our enjoyment and the many possibilities we can imagine. Not only in worlds of magic, but our own.
Sometimes you simply want all, I get it. That’s part of the reason why so many fairy tale characters know each other in my series, so why not try a brand-new fantasy romance anthology? Featuring 20 different short stories and authors, Once Upon A Forbidden Desire is bound to be magical. If you are anything like me, you have a long to-do list and there never seems like enough time. Short stories are the perfect thing for that in my opinion. I always savor them like an advent calendar’s candy.
When it comes to true love, rules are meant to be broken …
Dark forests and locked doors, poisoned apples and forbidden lovers ... Bold heroines and swoon-worthy heroes break all the rules in this enchanting anthology of the fairy tales you thought you knew.
Once Upon A Forbidden Desire features 20 enticing fairy tale retellings by a diverse selection of fantasy romance authors. From sweet true love’s kisses to sizzling passion, from modern streets to enchanted forests, and from a mage Rapunzel to a winged Prince Charming ...
If you enjoy captivating romance, enthralling new worlds, and stories with…
