Top Ten Tuesday | Santa Baby, Slip a Story Under the Tree | Twelve Days of Christmas!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find out everything you need to know about joining in here!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books I Wouldn't Mind Santa Bringing This Year'. I had to narrow it down to ten, because books are mainly what I ask for every birthday and Christmas - in fact I'm pretty sure my family and friends are sick of me asking for them by now.

I've decided to split my list into two mini lists; one of them being historical fiction and the other being science fiction. Why? Well because historical fiction is probably my favourite genre, and science fiction is the genre I've really started to learn more about and appreciate this year.

So, without further ado, here are my top ten!

Historical Fiction

Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers: I'm desperate to get my hands on a copy of the third and final book in the His Fair Assassin trilogy! I fell in love with this trilogy after reading Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph earlier this year, and I can't wait to see how LaFevers wraps this story up. I've put it on my Christmas list (in fact most of these books are on my Christmas list) so I'm hoping my parents will be kind enough to put a copy of this book beneath the tree for me!

The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau: Who doesn't want to read some historical crime with a nun for a protagonist? I've heard great things about this series, and I'm really eager to read some female-led historical crime.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: Frankly it's appalling that I haven't read this book yet. It's been on my TBR for far too long and I need to read it, because I've heard nothing but amazing things about it.

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine: A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses set in the '20s? Yes please!

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier: As any regular reader of my blog will know, I've fallen in love with Daphne du Maurier's work this year and I'd really like to read this. I'd love to see how she writes time travel!

Science Fiction

Valour's Choice by Tanya Huff: Tanya Huff's one of my favourite authors, but so far I've only read her fantasy fiction. I love her Blood Books and now I'd really like to give some of her science fiction a try. I love the premise of Valour's Choice, and I'm a big fan of all the female-led sci-fi I've been seeing lately.

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout: I've heard a lot of people describing this as 'Twilight with aliens'. While I no longer like Twilight, though I won't deny that I did like those books when I was a teenager, I do want to see what this series is all about for the pure and simple reason that it sounds fun. Not every book we read needs to be an amazing, groundbreaking piece of literature. Sometimes I like reading books that have been written purely for the sake of bringing enjoyment to the reader, and this sounds like one such book. Not only that, but I've actually been hearing mainly positive things about it.

For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund: I'm not the biggest fan of Jane Austen. At some point I want to reread Persuasion, the very book that made me dislike her in the first place back when I was around 18, to see if I can appreciate Austen more now that I'm older, but before that I'd like to give For Darkness Shows the Stars a try, because it is a sci-fi retelling of Persuasion. There's a chance that reading this might actually make me more eager to reread the book that inspired it, so I'm hoping to find it under my tree on Christmas day!

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner: Honestly one of the main reasons I want to read this book is because it has such a gorgeous cover, but it's also another a book I've heard nothing but great things about. Even if the idea of being stranded in space gives me the heebie jeebies.

Alienated by Melissa Landers: Like Obsidian, this sounds like another fun bit of sci-fi. I'm slowly getting into the genre, so I'm not quite into epic sci-fi just yet. I love sci-fi that combines people from outer space with people from earth, so this is right up my street!

Which books made your top ten?

Jess Suggests | Sci-Fi Retellings! | Sci-Fi Month 2014

I have a science fiction retelling (the first one on this list!) to thank for my first extremely positive experience with science fiction. As I've already mentioned this month science fiction was a genre I felt so intimidated by until I read Cinder, which really made me see the genre in a different light. 

So, in honour of the book that helped me overcome my fear of sci-fi, today I'm recommending four books which are all retellings, and all science fiction!

Cinder

by Marissa Meyer

Retelling of: Cinderella

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Warm Bodies

by Isaac Marion

Retelling of: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.

Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.

This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...

For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

Retelling of: Persuasion by Jane Austen

It's been several generations since a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, decimating humanity and giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology.

Elliot North has always known her place in this world. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family's estate over love. Since then the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress, and Elliot's estate is foundering, forcing her to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth--an almost unrecognizable Kai. And while Elliot wonders if this could be their second chance, Kai seems determined to show Elliot exactly what she gave up when she let him go.

But Elliot soon discovers her old friend carries a secret--one that could change their society . . . or bring it to its knees. And again, she's faced with a choice: cling to what she's been raised to believe, or cast her lot with the only boy she's ever loved, even if she's lost him forever.

Of Beast and Beauty

by Stacey Jay

Retelling of: Beauty and the Beast

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

Have you read any of these retellings? Are there any other retellings you'd recommend?