It’s true: there is nothing new under the sun. So, we tell the old stories in new ways. Here are four classic stories, retold in the form of thrillers.
You know the story of Persephone and Demeter as the ancient Greek explanation for the seasons: Demeter is the goddess of agriculture. She mourns the loss of her daughter Persephone, when she’s abducted by Hades and taken into the Underworld—that’s what makes winter happen. When she returns, spring and summer follow. But in this retelling, Malamar Veracruz’s town of El Valle has multiple girls go missing, including her sister, Elena. Mal’s two daughters join forces with her to learn where the missing girls have gone, and how to save their community before it’s too late.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 22, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
You probably know the story of Jane Eyre. If you don’t, stop reading this summary now, and read that first! Just to recap, in Charlotte Bronte’s famous bildungsroman, Jane accepts the position of a governess at Thornfield Hall and falls in love with the brooding Mr. Rochester. He loves her back, but Jane learns that she can’t marry him because he’s already married—he was tricked into marrying his wife for her money, not knowing that she was in a rapid cognitive decline. He locks her up in Thornfield Hall, and he wants to live with Jane in the South of France anyway, but she refuses and leaves her position. Later, after inheriting a lot, Jane returns to Thornfield to find it a smoldering ruin. What had happened was (Rochester says), Mrs. Rochester escaped her room again and burned the place to the ground and threw herself off the roof. He lost his eyesight and one hand trying to save her and the servants. Now, he’s free to marry Jane.
In a similar outset, our novel starts with Jane accepting an offer to tutor a teenager on the Rochester estate at Big Sur. Evan Rochester insists that his troubled wife drowned herself, but Jane is skeptical. Even so, she falls for the secretive entrepreneur and grows closer to his daughter. Still, she can’t silence the question, what really happened to the first Mrs. Rochester?
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 1, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
You know the conceit of Frankenstein: in Mary Shelley’s novel, the young scientist Victor Frankenstein sews body parts of corpses together and gives the new body life through resurrection. In Ahmed Saadawi’s novel, our protagonist is less hubristic. Hadi is a scavenger and an oddball fixture in a local café in U.S.-occupied Baghdad. He collects parts of human bodies in hopes that the government will recognize the parts as people, and he wants them to have a proper burial. But when Hadi’s completed corpse goes missing, and a wave of murders disrupts the city, reports roll in of a horrific-looking criminal who cannot be killed.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 23, 2018. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In case you forgot the premise of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, our heroine is an orphaned lady’s maid in Monte Carlo when she accepts the sudden marriage proposal from a dashing widower, Maxim de Winter. She doesn’t realize until she arrives at Manderlay, his family estate on the Cornish Coast, that his first wife, Rebecca, will be a constant presence. Similarly, a young woman arrives to the Ashlerley estate of Max Winter, a wealthy politician and recent widower, and to a life of extreme luxury. His late wife, Rebekah, haunts her imagination, and their teenage daughter rages against the soon-to-be Mrs. Winter. She falls more in love with Max and grows more afraid of the daughter… and she goes deeper into the history of the family’s ghosts.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 7, 2020. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
