20th Century Books & Movies Retold

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Kristian Wilson Colyard grew up weird successful a one-caution-light municipality successful the Appalachian foothills. She present lives successful an aged textile metropolis with her hubby and their clowder of cats. She’s connected Twitter @kristianwriting, and you tin find much of her enactment online astatine kristianwriting.com.

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The instability of caller years has ushered successful a boatload of changes to the publishing world, for amended oregon worse. One I’m seeing, again and again, is the inclination of books that retell stories that just…aren’t that old. Not successful the expansive strategy of things, anyway. Whenever these 20th period books and movies are retold successful modern releases, they’re getting remixed successful caller and breathtaking ways. Let’s instrumentality a look astatine a fewer of them, shall we?

Remixes hap each the time, particularly successful publishing. Authors revisit classics similar Frankenstein and Jane Eyre to give them the instrumentality fabrication treatment: queer ’em up, crook a fewer genders and races, crook idiosyncratic into a oversea monster, and voila! A caller communicative emerges. (Trust maine erstwhile I accidental I’m not knocking this process. I chopped my teeth connected fic.)

Little did I know, however, that you could retell a much caller story, 1 that wasn’t successful the nationalist domain, without getting sued. You can’t copyright an idea, arsenic it turns out. So if you work a communicative astir a magical feline who tin locomotion done walls, and privation to constitute your ain communicative astir a magical feline who tin locomotion done walls, nary one’s going to halt you, provided you don’t springiness your feline the aforesaid sanction arsenic their cat, oregon effort to transcript their penning benignant — “expression,” successful copyright terms.

So hey, possibly this has been going connected since clip immemorial, and I’m conscionable present catching on. The constituent is, I emotion this inclination and I emotion these books, and I anticipation you volition too.

20th Century Books & Movies Retold

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

Retells: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Beatriz lived a charmed beingness earlier the warfare took everything distant from her. In the aftermath of her father’s execution, she accepts a connection from a affluent widower, Don Rodolfo Solórzano, whom she hardly knows. Better a beingness with a alien than to subsist without a extortion implicit her head. Being the caller Doña Solórzano affords her a modicum of powerfulness and prestige. But she’s ne'er asked what happened to her husband’s precocious wife. Now, holding down the fort portion Don Solórzano is distant connected business, Beatriz dilatory comes to recognize that she should person asked that question — and galore much — earlier coming to Hacienda San Isidro.

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Number One Fan by Meg Elison

Retells: Misery by Stephen King

When she wakes up imprisoned successful a makeshift holding cell, the past happening Eli remembers is the cab. She lone fto her defender down for a second. That was each it took. Chained up successful the basement of a rabid instrumentality who believes helium knows what’s champion for her work, the writer indispensable enactment to portion unneurotic the clues to her captor’s identity. She’s moving against the clock. And with nary anticipation of impending rescue, the likelihood are wholly stacked against her.

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

Retells: Carrie by Stephen King

The unfortunate of 2 viral bullying episodes, Maddy Washington was crowned prom queen astatine her tiny town’s archetypal integrated prom. That night, the full assemblage went up successful flames, and Maddy was ne'er seen again. Now, years aft the enigma near web sleuths scratching their heads, 2 podcasters reconstruct the weeks starring up to that unspeakable night, successful The Weight of Blood.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

Retells: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

The Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities and Taxidermy ain’t overmuch — conscionable a roadside tourer trap successful Hog Chapel, North Carolina — but to Kara, it already feels similar home. She’s conscionable getting backmost connected her feet, and her Uncle Earl has been benignant capable to assistance her out. So erstwhile Earl finds himself temporarily retired of commission, she’s blessed to instrumentality the favor. Little does Kara cognize that the museum’s crumbling faults fell a sinister transportation to different worlds…whose inhabitants are acceptable and waiting to invade her own.

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Retells: The Thin Man (1934), a movie based connected the caller of the aforesaid sanction by Dashiell Hammett

Wealthy genius Tesla Crane has been happily cruising the stars successful anonymity. Too atrocious idiosyncratic had to spell and get themself murdered. Nothing similar a wrongful apprehension to ruin your honeymoon. With her caller spouse’s state and estimation successful the balance, Tesla and her work dog, Gimlet, indispensable enactment unneurotic to lick the lawsuit the abstraction liner’s officers of the instrumentality cannot.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Retells: The Horror astatine Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft*

A man’s got to marque a living, adjacent if his enactment is occasionally…distasteful. Tommy Tester supports himself and his begetter by doing the jobs different radical don’t privation to soiled their hands with — similar playing courier with occult tomes of immense power. But erstwhile idiosyncratic retaliates against Tommy for meddling with a sorceress’s business, and his begetter gets caught successful the crossfire, Victor LaValle’s young leader is forced to marque immoderate pragmatic concern arrangements to spot that justness is served.

*H.P. Lovecraft was a horrifically racist antisemite. His bigotry was utmost adjacent among different achromatic men of his day. These are irrefutable facts. But helium is precise overmuch dead, rendering him incapable of making immoderate wealth disconnected my notation to his work. Therefore, I person nary qualms astir including a nexus to The Horror Red Hook here. But due to the fact that this is the Internet, and due to the fact that the Internet is what it is, I consciousness obliged to see this disclaimer anyway.

Hurt You by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Retells: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Georgia’s household relocated to the suburbs truthful that her older brother, Leonardo da Vinci Daewoo Kim, could be a schoolhouse that was amended equipped to enactment him. But prejudice against neurodivergent radical similar Leonardo runs deep, adjacent among self-professed allies, and Georgia isn’t letting her defender down, contempt her parents’ insistence that she beryllium escaped to unrecorded her ain life.

Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu

Retells: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Girls similar Evie Barnes don’t get immoderate respect successful 1960s Texas, adjacent successful a large metropolis similar Houston. She’s a bad girl. A fast girl. She’s asking for it. Except she isn’t. And Diane knows it. She mightiness travel from an upstanding family, but she’s definite Evie isn’t truly arsenic atrocious arsenic they say. That’s wherefore Diane saves her from a convulsive brushwood with a fashionable — read: “good” — boy, a lad who’s dormant by the clip Evie comes to. Now, she and Diane person a concealed to keep…for arsenic agelong arsenic they can.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Retells: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jordan Baker appears to person it each — astatine slightest from the outside. She’s really terribly lonely. Her achromatic household was portion of New York’s societal elite, the benignant who rubbed elbows with the Mrs. Astor. The Bakers adopted Jordan from Vietnam, and she’s spent her full beingness trying to disregard the mode their nine friends person relegated her to the margins due to the fact that of her heritage. But erstwhile her puerility friends, Daisy and Jay, saunter backmost into her life, Jordan is forced to face each the achy realities she’s been moving distant from, implicit the people of 1 fateful season.

Want much literate retellings? Check retired these riffs connected Frankenstein, Little Red Riding Hood, and Beauty and the Beast.

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