100 books like The Legendary Inge

By Kate Stradling,

Here are 100 books that The Legendary Inge fans have personally recommended if you like The Legendary Inge. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Echo North

M. L. Farb Author Of Vasilisa

From my list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my favorite sections in the library is the collections of folk and fairy tales. Especially the lesser-known tales. My novel, Vasilisa, is inspired by the Russian folktale Vasilisa and Staver, plus my question of “how did Vasilisa get so strong?” I love combining folk tales with extensive research of the culture and history of their settings, as well as delving into characters who have vastly different experiences than mine. And I love reading character and detail-rich novelizations of traditional tales. It was difficult to pick only five novels based on lesser-known fairy tales. Enjoy, then go find some others!

M. L.'s book list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales

M. L. Farb Why did M. L. love this book?

Echo North combined several familiar-to-me folk tales, and introduced me to the tale of Tam Lin. I loved the blending of known and original—especially the mirror room, where stories layered upon stories and acquaintances took on completely new qualities. The sewing together of a fracturing magical house also fascinated me. I was never sure about the intentions of certain people until the end, and despite guessing wrong, I was delighted by what really was happening.

By Joanna Ruth Meyer,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Echo North as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

In his enchanted house beneath a mountain, each room must be sewn together to keep the home from unraveling, and something new and dark and strange lies behind every door. When centuries-old secrets unfold, Echo discovers a magical library full of books- turned-mirrors, and a young man named Hal who is trapped inside of them. As the year ticks by, the rooms begin to disappear and Echo must solve the mystery of the wolf's enchantment before her time is up otherwise Echo, the wolf, and Hal will be lost forever.


Book cover of Thorn

M. L. Farb Author Of Vasilisa

From my list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my favorite sections in the library is the collections of folk and fairy tales. Especially the lesser-known tales. My novel, Vasilisa, is inspired by the Russian folktale Vasilisa and Staver, plus my question of “how did Vasilisa get so strong?” I love combining folk tales with extensive research of the culture and history of their settings, as well as delving into characters who have vastly different experiences than mine. And I love reading character and detail-rich novelizations of traditional tales. It was difficult to pick only five novels based on lesser-known fairy tales. Enjoy, then go find some others!

M. L.'s book list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales

M. L. Farb Why did M. L. love this book?

I have two favorite retellings of Goose Girl and it was difficult to pick one for my list (the other is by Shannon Hale). The lyrical language combined with a young woman who grows from passive acceptance to taking a stand is beautiful. I especially love the ending and her unique solution to saving the man she loves. It is a story of abuse and healing, learning to trust and to find family. It is also on justice and mercy, at many levels.

By Intisar Khanani,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Thorn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

'A dark, Middle-Eastern influenced retelling [...] dangerous secrets, false identities, delicious court intrigue and justice.' Culture Fly

Between her family's cruelty and the court's contempt, Princess Alyrra has spent her life in the shadows. Forced to marry a powerful foreign prince, Alyrra embarks on a journey to meet her betrothed with little hope for a better future. But powerful men have powerful enemies - and now so does Alyrra.

When Alyrra is betrayed and her identity is switched with another woman's, Alyrra is faced with the first choice she's ever had: to start a new life for herself or fight…


Book cover of Shadow Spinner

M. L. Farb Author Of Vasilisa

From my list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my favorite sections in the library is the collections of folk and fairy tales. Especially the lesser-known tales. My novel, Vasilisa, is inspired by the Russian folktale Vasilisa and Staver, plus my question of “how did Vasilisa get so strong?” I love combining folk tales with extensive research of the culture and history of their settings, as well as delving into characters who have vastly different experiences than mine. And I love reading character and detail-rich novelizations of traditional tales. It was difficult to pick only five novels based on lesser-known fairy tales. Enjoy, then go find some others!

M. L.'s book list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales

M. L. Farb Why did M. L. love this book?

This was one of my first introductions to novel-length fairy tales. Shadow Spinner influenced the first stories I made up as bedtime tales for my little sisters. Like Marjan, I love playing with the many threads of traditional tales, weaving them together with my own threads of imagination. I still have folders with my first attempts at writing the thousand-and-second tale of Arabian Nights. 

By Susan Fletcher, Dave Kramer (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shadow Spinner as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Every night, Shahrazad begins a story. And every morning, the Sultan lets her live another day -- providing the story is interesting enough to capture his attention. After almost one thousand nights, Shahrazad is running out of tales. And that is how Marjan's story begins....
It falls to Marjan to help Shahrazad find new stories -- ones the Sultan has never heard before. To do that, the girl is forced to undertake a dangerous and forbidden mission: sneak from the harem and travel the city, pulling tales from strangers and bringing them back to Shahrazad. But as she searches the…


Book cover of Enchantress from the Stars

M. L. Farb Author Of Vasilisa

From my list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my favorite sections in the library is the collections of folk and fairy tales. Especially the lesser-known tales. My novel, Vasilisa, is inspired by the Russian folktale Vasilisa and Staver, plus my question of “how did Vasilisa get so strong?” I love combining folk tales with extensive research of the culture and history of their settings, as well as delving into characters who have vastly different experiences than mine. And I love reading character and detail-rich novelizations of traditional tales. It was difficult to pick only five novels based on lesser-known fairy tales. Enjoy, then go find some others!

M. L.'s book list on based on lesser known folk and fairytales

M. L. Farb Why did M. L. love this book?

This book blended fantasy and science fiction in a way that caught me and didn’t let go. I appreciate the moral dilemma of: is it better to interfere and stop a wrong if the interference might cause an even greater wrong? I like to make decisions based on facts rather than emotion, but this book shows how both are needed in balance. And how even doing good comes at a cost—are we willing to pay the cost?

By Sylvia Engdahl,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Enchantress from the Stars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Rediscover this beloved Newbery Honor-winning classic, Featuring a brand-new cover and a foreword by Lois Lowry!

Elana, a member of an interstellar civilization on a mission to a medieval planet, becomes the key to a dangerous plan to turn back an invasion. How can she help the Andrecians, who still believe in magic and superstition, without revealing her own alien powers? At the same time, Georyn, the son of an Andrecian woodcutter, knows only that there is a dragon in the enchanted forest, and he must defeat it. He sees Elana as the Enchantress from the Stars who has come…


Book cover of Monster Theory: Reading Culture

William M. Tsutsui Author Of Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters

From my list on why we love monsters.

Why am I passionate about this?

I saw my first Godzilla movie when I was seven years old, and I immediately fell in love: what kid doesn’t want to be a giant radioactive monster with attitude? But unlike baseball cards, I never outgrew Godzilla and, over the decades, came to appreciate the cultural significance of one of the world’s most enduring film icons. In my writing on Godzilla, I explore my own fascination with monsters and contemplate why all societies, from the dawn of time to today, have compulsively created imaginary creatures that terrify them. The books on this list have helped me understand the human obsession with monsters, and I hope you will find them equally enlightening and enjoyable.

William's book list on why we love monsters

William M. Tsutsui Why did William love this book?

I am generally not a big fan of hardcore academic theory, but this collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen gave me a steady stream of "aha!" moments when I first read it about twenty years ago.

I struggled a bit with some of the jargon here, not to mention the fact that it only deals with monsters in the Western tradition, but I know of no better book for helping readers understand why humans create (and need) monsters, what roles monsters play in affirming (and undermining) social norms, and what the study of monsters can reveal about the anxieties and fault-lines in the cultures that spawn them. “Monsters are our children,” Cohen writes at one point: that still blows my mind after two decades of chewing on it.

By Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Monster Theory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argues the essays in this wide-ranging collection that asks the question, what happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture? In viewing the monstrous body as metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of very real fears and desires, signs of cultural unease that pervade society and shape its collective behaviour. Through a sampling of monsters as a conceptual category, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies…


Book cover of Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

Peter Grybauskas Author Of A Sense of Tales Untold: Exploring the Edges of Tolkien's Literary Canvas

From my list on fantastic depths beyond The Lord of the Rings.

Why am I passionate about this?

Today, I teach fantasy at the University of Maryland, but I’ve been hooked on Tolkien from a young age. As a kid, I was wary that serious study of Tolkien might “destroy the magic,” but decades spent in strange corners of Tolkien’s invented universe have only deepened my appreciation for the inexhaustible depth of his sub-creation—it’s simply steeped in a profound sense of untold stories. I hope you enjoy digging in as much as I have. 

Peter's book list on fantastic depths beyond The Lord of the Rings

Peter Grybauskas Why did Peter love this book?

I loved this book because it illuminated Tolkien’s lifelong fascination with Beowulf, probably his greatest influence. The translation is good, but the commentary is better, and the inclusion of two short works, Sellic Spell and the Lay of Beowulf, showed me Tolkien’s delight in “re-tellings.”

His creative genius was seldom far removed from his scholarly work. 

By J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Beowulf as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication.

This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.

From his creative attention to detail in these…


Book cover of The Book of Marvels and Travels

Asa Simon Mittman Author Of The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous

From my list on explaining the history of monsters.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up, I rewatched Star Wars until I wore out my VHS tape. I read every Dragonlance novel. I played a bit of D&D. When I got to college, I finally was allowed work on things that interested me. I found Art History, dove into Medieval Studies, and, in grad school, got serious about monsters. Monster Studies didn’t exist, but books were out (especially by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen), and my advisor encouraged me to follow my passions. My 15-year-old self would be astonished to learn that I’d get to read monster books, study monster art, and watch monster movies as a job!

Asa's book list on explaining the history of monsters

Asa Simon Mittman Why did Asa love this book?

This is the most important book people have never heard of. It was immensely popular in the Middle Ages – 300 manuscripts survive in nine languages (Beowulf, another monster tale, survives in one copy). The probably-fictional “John Mandeville, knight, though I am not worthy” sets out from England in 1332, travels the known world on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and continues all the way to India. He encounters wondrous places, people, and beasts. The book is fundamentally flawed, with rampant racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, sexism, and on, but this is why it matters. Mandeville was Columbus’s reading on his voyage to “the Indies,” and encouraged him to see indigenous populations as monstrous. It is terrible, and terribly important. Bale’s excellent introduction and translation are the best of many versions.

By John Mandeville, Anthony Bale (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Book of Marvels and Travels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Another island in the Great Ocean has many sinful and malevolent women, who have precious gems in their eyes.'

In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. He tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun . Forceful and…


Book cover of Beowulf

Why am I passionate about this?

To experience another's thoughts and emotions, one first has to feel them. Eyes, lips, tongue, and teeth are involved before the brain/heart can engage. Translation of poetry is the same. My mother has sung Chinese poetry to me since forever, and English poetry came alive for me through verse speaking. I studied and taught as I wrote for many years. I cannot say I find my way into every poem I come across, but the poems I translate are ones I know and love. That is why I am passionate about translation. For me, it is not a secondary experience but a primary, primal performance art!

Susan's book list on translated books that capture the magic of the original, making what’s unfamiliar, foreign or ancient, accessible

Susan Wan Dolling Why did Susan love this book?

That I would love a poem written/translated by Seamus Heaney did not come as a surprise to me, but that it is Beowulf, a poem/story steeped in the Germanic warrior culture and soaked in blood that enthralled me, did surprise me.

I do not remember the occasion that prompted my reading, but even as I opened the book to its Introduction, and read “...And now this is ‘an inheritance’ --/Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked/ In the long ago, yet willable forward...Again and again and again,” I could not put it down.

In fact, you might say, it is not the story but the voice of the poet and how he brought this ancient language and people back to life that compelled me to read on. Of course, the voice is that of the poet of “Digging,” as he traces his roots back to these unlikely ancestors.

By Seamus Heaney,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Beowulf as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. In his new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own creative gift.

The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels between this story and the history of the…


Book cover of The Mere Wife

Kirstyn McDermott Author Of Perfections

From my list on literary horror that will get under your skin.

Why am I passionate about this?

While I’ve been a voraciously omnivorous reader my whole life, I’ve always been drawn most to stories that take me into the darkest of dark places, and that sometimes leave me there, alone and without a light. Horror, weird fiction, and the contemporary gothic all have a permanent home in my heart, and they’re the genres in which I most like to play as a writer. Most of all, I love those dark stories that stretch boundaries and defy conventions, that wield language as the beautifully vicious weapon it can be, and challenge me to do the same.

Kirstyn's book list on literary horror that will get under your skin

Kirstyn McDermott Why did Kirstyn love this book?

You don’t have to know Beowulf to enjoy this modern-day re-imagining – set in a gated community at the foot of a mined-out mountain with subterranean caves and lakes a plenty – but the novel serves up delicious layers for readers familiar with the Old English epic. Headley weaves a story that is horrific and beautiful in equal measure as she explores the gulf between the experiences of two very different mothers – Dana, an ex-soldier barely surviving in the wilderness with her son Gren; and Willa Herot, suburban royalty living a luxurious if socially pressurised existence, protected her wealthy husband’s power. With writing that oscillates between lyrical poetics and prose that is sparse, blunt, and direct, The Mere Wife is a darkly fabulous novel that I look forward to reading over and over again.

By Maria Dahvana Headley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Mere Wife as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New Statesman Book of the Year

A fierce, feminist retelling of the classic tale Beowulf.

Gren and his mother, Dana, a war veteran, live on the side of a mountain, next to Herot Hall, a pristine gated community ruled over by Willa and her son, Dylan. Separated by high gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights, Dylan and Gren are unaware of the barriers erected to keep them apart. But when Gren crosses the border into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, he sets up a collision between Dana's and Willa's worlds that echoes the Beowulf story - and…


Book cover of Grendel

John Wiswell Author Of Someone You Can Build a Nest In

From my list on showing the human side of monsters.

Why am I passionate about this?

I never outgrew the curiosity of wanting to know more about the things we fear. Plenty of monsters are just neat! But the more you learn about them, whether they’re animals like bears and sharks or figures of myth like werewolves and dragons, the more interesting they become. I wanted to take audiences deep inside a skin unlike their own so they could understand how it feels to be cast out and how much a monster might look down on us. Because the more you look at monsters, the more you recognize us in them.

John's book list on showing the human side of monsters

John Wiswell Why did John love this book?

One of the classic novels about monsters having internal lives. Grendel doesn’t even survive the first half of the Beowulf poem.

But what was his life like? This creature who went into rages over music and merriment? This outsider who clearly had no one to commune with? Where there could just be pathos, Gardner injects surprising dorkiness and humor that further round out Grendel’s existence. And there’s a huge bonus in the poem’s dragon also showing up as an utter weirdo neighbor.

By John Gardner,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Grendel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.

"An extraordinary achievement."—New York Times

The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."


Book cover of Echo North
Book cover of Thorn
Book cover of Shadow Spinner

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Interested in Beowulf, fairy tales, and folk music?

Beowulf 20 books
Fairy Tales 315 books
Folk Music 62 books