With Seth Graham-Smith's literary mash-up Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter finally telling the "true story" behind one of America's most iconic presidents, we decided to see what other unique stories were out there – and what crazy secrets they revealed about history's (and literature's) famed faces.
From dead dwarves, zombies and werewolves to androids, these 30(!) literary mash-ups put a new twist on familiar stories. If you think Abraham Lincoln is dangerous with a hatchet, just wait until you see what Queen Victoria can do with with her royal axe.
By: Seth Grahame-Smith
Description: They're an iconic part of history's most celebrated birth. But what do we really know about the Three Kings of the Nativity - besides the fact that they followed a star to Bethlehem bearing strange gifts? The Bible has little to say about this enigmatic trio, but leave it to Seth Grahame-Smith - the brilliant and twisted mind behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to take a little mystery, bend a little history, and weave an epic tale.
In Grahame-Smith's telling, the so-called "Three Wise Men" are infamous thieves, led by the dark, murderous Balthazar. After a daring escape from Herod's prison, they stumble upon the famous manger and its newborn king. The last thing Balthazar needs is to be slowed down by young Joseph, Mary and their infant. But when Herod's men begin to slaughter the first borns in Judea, he has no choice but to help them escape to Egypt.
By: Bob McLain
Description: Snow White has bigger problems than a red apple. The Dwarfs have bigger problems than Snow White. Well, no, actually they don't, because Snow White is now a flesh-eating ghoul with an appetite for dwarves.
In this modern retelling of the classic fairy tale, a zombie plague from the 'real world' somehow enters the beloved realms of childhood fantasy, starting with the kingdom of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Mirror, mirror on the wallWho is the deadest one of all?
By: Ben H Winters (and Jane Austen)
Description: "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets.
While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?
By: Claudia Gabel (and William Shakespeare)
By: Paul A. Freeman
Description: Medieval civilization was under threat from the undead. When lion-hearted Richard ruled the roost of England, he decided that to boost His regal reputation he should mount a war to wrest from Turkish men the fount of Christendom; yet in that desert land a zombie plague emerged from ’midst the sand. A necromancer’s alchemistic spell Reanimated corpses bound for Hell (And even bound for Heaven’s pearly gate).
By: A.E. Moorat
Description: London, 1838. Queen Victoria is crowned; she receives the orb, the scepter, and an arsenal of bloodstained weaponry. If Britain is about to become the greatest power of the age, there’s the small matter of the undead to take care of first. Demons stalk the crown, and political ambitions have unleashed ravening hordes of zombies even within the nobility itself.
By: Porter Grand (and Louisa May Alcott)
Description: A literary landmark—the original, suppressed draft of the classic novel!
"Little Women" is a timeless classic. But Louisa May Alcott’s first draft—before her editor sunk his teeth into it—was even better. Now the original text has at last been exhumed. In this uncensored version, the March girls learn some biting lessons, transforming from wild girls into little women—just as their friends and neighbors transform into vicious, bloodthirsty werewolves!
Here are tomboy Jo, quiet Beth, ladylike Amy, and good-hearted Meg, plus lovable neighbor Laurie Laurence, now doomed to prowl the night on all fours, maiming and devouring the locals. As the Civil War rages, the girls learn the value of being kind, the merits of patience and grace, and the benefits of knowing a werewolf who can disembowel your teacher.
By turns heartwarming and blood-curdling, this rejuvenated classic will be cherished and treasured by those who love a lesson in virtue almost as much as they enjoy a good old-fashioned dismemberment.
By: Sherri Browning Erwin (and Charlotte Bronte)
Description: Jane Slayre, our plucky demon-slaying heroine, a courageous orphan who spurns the detestable vampyre kin who raised her, sets out on the advice of her ghostly uncle to hone her skills as the fearless slayer she's meant to be. When she takes a job as a governess at a country estate, she falls head-over-heels for her new master, Mr. Rochester, only to discover he's hiding a violent werewolf in the attic--in the form of his first wife.
By: A.E. Moorat
Description: Five hundred years ago Henry VIII had a fearsome temper and bloodthirsty reputation to match; more beast than human, some might say...
Henry the Eighth was the bloodiest king ever to have sat on the throne of England. This fast-paced, exciting, inventive, and just plain bloody retelling of his reign will bring to light the real man behind the myth.
By: Adam Roberts
Description: The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house counting money. The boards that he has nailed up over the doors and the windows shudder and shake under the blows from the endless zombie hordes that crowd the streets hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiiiinns!
By: Kevin Postupack
By: Nickolas Cook (and Lewis Carroll)
Description: When little Alice follows the Black Rat down into the gaping darkness of an open grave, she falls and falls. And soon finds herself in an undead nightmare of rotting flesh and insanity. Venturing further into this land of zombies and monsters, she encounters characters both creepy and madcap along the way. But there's something else troubling poor Alice: her skin is rotting and her hair is falling out. She's cold. And she has the haunting feeling that if she remains in Zombieland any longer, she might never leave.
By: Eric S. Brown (and H.G. Wells)
Description: The invasion begins... and the dead start to rise. There's panic in the streets of London as invaders from Mars wreak havoc on the living, slaying the populace with Heat-Rays and poisonous clouds of black smoke. Humanity struggles to survive against technology far beyond its own, meeting fear and death at every turn. But that's not the only struggle mankind must face. The dead are rising from their graves with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.
By: P.D. James
Description: It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.
Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.
By: Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austen)
Description: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," an expanded version of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.
By: Ryan C. Thomas (and L. Frank Baum)
Description: One day, on a peaceful farm in Kansas, a tornado appeared. The storm raged and ripped the house from the ground. Inside sat a little girl named Dorothy and her dog Toto. The house spun. The winds roared. The tornado showed no mercy, until . . . The house landed in a strange and magical land called Oz. But that's where the fairytale ends and the nightmare begins. The Wicked Witch of the West has cast a spell on the Land of Oz, a spell that brings the dead back to life. Only the Great Wizard in the Emerald City can stop this curse, but he has never been seen.
By: Michael Thomas Ford
Description: Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen is still surrounded by the literature she loves—but now it's because she's the owner of Flyleaf Books in a sleepy college town in Upstate New York. Every day she watches her novels fly off the shelves—along with dozens of unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations. Jane may be undead, but her books have taken on a life of their own.
By: Adam Rann (and Jane Austen)
By: Ben H. Winters (and Leo Tolstoy)
Description: As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: the tragic adulterous romance of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the much more hopeful marriage of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These four, yearning for true love, live in a steampunk-inspired 19th century of mechanical butlers, extraterrestrial-worshiping cults, and airborne debutante balls.
By: Vera Nazarian (and Jane Austen)
Description: Ancient Egypt infiltrates Regency England in this elegant, hilarious, witty, insane, and unexpectedly romantic monster parody of Jane Austen's classic novel. Our gentle yet indomitable heroine Fanny Price must hold steadfast not only against the seductive charms of Henry Crawford but also an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh! Meanwhile, the indubitably handsome and kind hero Edmund attempts Exorcisms... Miss Crawford vamps out... Aunt Norris channels her inner werewolf... The Mummy-mesmerized Lady Bertram collects Egyptian artifacts...
By: Ralph S King (and Emily Bronte)
By: Lynn Messina (and Louisa May Alcott)
Description: The dear, sweet March sisters are back, and Marmee has told them to be good little women. Good little vampire women, that is. That's right: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy have grown up since you last read their tale, and now they have (much) longer lives and (much) more ravenous appetites.
By: Melissa Lemon
By: Cecily von Ziegesar
By: Jasper Fforde
By: Amanda Grange
By: Vera Nazarian (and Jane Austen)
Description: Dragons in the skies of Regency England!
Gothic horrors collide with high satire in this elegant, hilarious, witty, insane, and unexpectedly romantic supernatural parody of Jane Austen's classic novel.
Young and naive Catherine Morland is constantly surrounded by angels only she alone can see. Leaving her country home for the first time, to embark on a grand adventure that begins in fashionable Bath, our romantic heroine must not only decrypt the mystery of the Udolpho Code but win her true love Henry Tilney.
By: Regina Jeffers
Description: Happily married for over a year and more in love than ever, Darcy and Elizabeth can’t imagine anythinginterrupting their bliss-filled days. Then an intense snowstorm strands a group of travelers at Pemberley, and terrifying accidents and mysterious deaths begin to plague the manor. Everyone seems convinced that it is the work of a phan-tom—a Shadow Man who is haunting the Darcy family’s grand estate.
By: Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
Description: Once upon a time, in a land you only think you know, lived a little girl and her mother... or the woman she thought was her mother. Every day, when the little girl played in her pretty garden, she grew more curious about what lay on the other side of the garden wall . . . a rather enormous garden wall. And every year, as she grew older, things seemed weirder and weirder, until the day she finally climbed to the top of the wall and looked over into the mines and desert beyond.
By: Sarah Gray
Description: When a young orphan named Heathcliff is brought to Wuthering Heights by the manor's owner, Mr. Earnshaw, rumors abound. Yet the truth is more complicated than anyone could guess. Heathcliff's mother was a member of a gypsy band that roamed the English countryside, slaying vampires to keep citizens safe. But his father was a vampire. Now, even as Heathcliff gallantly fights the monsters who roam the moors in order to protect beautiful, spirited Catherine Earnshaw, he is torn by compassion for his victims - and by his own dark thirst.
Phew! You made it!