Bookdriftopen the map →

Books like Tender Morsels

Margo Lanagan · 2008 · Australia · fantasy
★ 3.60 Goodreads · 6,014 ratings

Liga, a young woman who has suffered terribly at the hands of men, is given a heaven of her own where she can raise her two daughters in peace, until the real world begins to break through.

Explore books like this on the map

12 books for readers of Tender Morsels

Spindle's End

Robin McKinley · 2000 · US 96% match ★ 3.82 Goodreads · 25,752 ratings
shares: retelling, fairytale, magic, fairy tale · speculative, unhurried

Cursed at her name-day by a wicked fairy, the infant princess is spirited away to a remote village by a young fairy, Katriona, who raises her as an ordinary girl called Rosie, who can talk to animals.

Uprooted

Naomi Novik · 2015 · US 95% match ★ 4.01 Goodreads · 274,792 ratings
shares: fairytale, magic, female perspective, fairy tale · earnest, speculative

A village girl with earth magic is conscripted to fight an ancient evil in the enchanted forest, and discovers power she never imagined.

Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi · 2014 · UK 93% match ★ 3.34 Goodreads · 31,297 ratings
shares: retelling, fairytale, mothers, fairy tale · unhurried, rich prose

In 1953 Boy Novak flees her father in New York for a small Massachusetts town and marries a widower with a lovely daughter, Snow, until the birth of her own daughter reveals what his family has been passing as.

The Last Wish

Andrzej Sapkowski · 1993 · Poland 93% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 439,372 ratings
Book 1 of 9 in The Witcher
shares: retelling, fairytale, fairy tale · speculative, intimate

Geralt of Rivia, a witcher who hunts monsters for pay, rests at a temple of the goddess Melitele after a hard fight and remembers the jobs that brought him there.

White Cat, Black Dog

Kelly Link · 2023 · US 92% match ★ 3.79 Goodreads · 8,106 ratings
shares: retelling, fairytale, fairy tale · uncanny, speculative

Seven fairy tales retold in Link's sideways style, starting with a rich old man, his three sons and a cannabis farm in the Vermont hills run by cats.

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas · 2015 · US 91% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 4,653,884 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in A Court of Thorns and Roses
shares: retelling, fairytale, magic · earnest, speculative

Nineteen-year-old Feyre kills a wolf to feed her starving family, and a beastlike faerie comes to claim her life in payment, carrying her across the wall to his court in Prythian, where a blight is spreading through the fae lands.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

Patricia A. McKillip · 1974 · US 90% match ★ 4.07 Goodreads · 22,833 ratings
shares: fairytale, magic, female perspective · speculative, unhurried

Sybel, a young wizard who lives alone on Eld Mountain with the legendary beasts her father called there, is brought a baby to raise, the son of a king at war.

The Last Unicorn

Peter S. Beagle · 1968 · US 90% match ★ 4.16 Goodreads · 128,483 ratings
shares: fairytale, magic, fairy tale · rich prose, speculative

A unicorn who has lived alone in her lilac wood since the world was young hears that she may be the last of her kind, and leaves to find out what happened to the others.

Wicked

Gregory Maguire · 1995 · US 90% match ★ 3.50 Goodreads · 698,244 ratings
Book 1 of 4 in The Wicked Years
shares: retelling · dark, unhurried

The Wicked Witch of the West as a green-skinned girl from Munchkinland who becomes a student radical for the rights of talking Animals, long before a farmhouse falls from Kansas.

Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden

Jack Vance · 1983 · US 90% match ★ 3.93 Goodreads · 6,227 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Lyonesse
shares: fairytale, magic, fairy tale · speculative, unhurried

In the Elder Isles, before King Arthur's day, King Casmir of Lyonesse schemes for the throne of all the islands, and shuts his daughter Suldrun in a wild garden when she refuses the marriage he arranges.

Girls of Paper and Fire

Natasha Ngan · 2018 · UK 89% match ★ 3.80 Goodreads · 59,966 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Girls of Paper and Fire
shares: harrowing, magic · dark, earnest

Lei, a girl of the lowest, fully human Paper caste, is taken from her village to the palace of the Demon King to serve as one of his Paper Girls, and finds herself falling for another of the chosen girls, Wren.

Gild

Raven Kennedy · 2020 · US 89% match ★ 3.62 Goodreads · 431,614 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in The Plated Prisoner
shares: retelling, fairytale, female perspective · speculative, interior

Auren is King Midas's favoured, gold-touched by him as his possession and kept in his castle of gold in the frozen mountains of Highbell, and when war comes and a deal is struck, her faith in the man who pulled her from the slums begins to crack.