Books Like Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is a masterwork of the fairy-tale retelling: the Rumpelstiltskin story, taken with complete seriousness and rebuilt into something stranger, colder, and more beautiful. Miryem is a moneylender’s daughter in a small Jewish community in a fantasy version of Eastern Europe, and when she takes over her father’s business, she discovers a talent for turning silver into gold - a talent that attracts the attention of the Staryk, the icy king of a fairy realm where silver is precious and winter is eternal.

The book is about bargains - the bargains we make, the prices we pay, and the women who refuse to be the coin. If you have finished it and want more of that cold magic, here is where to go next.

If You Loved the Retelling: Old Stories Made New#

Spinning Silver takes the Rumpelstiltskin story - a girl who must spin straw into gold, a strange little man who helps her in exchange for her firstborn child - and rebuilds it with complete seriousness. These books are retellings of the same kind.

Uprooted (Naomi Novik)#

Novik’s other great novel: Agnieszka lives in a valley shadowed by a dark wood, and every ten years the Dragon - a wizard who protects the valley - takes a girl. When he chooses Agnieszka, everyone is surprised, including her. It is the essential companion: the same folkloric roots, the same dark woods, the same young woman who turns out to be the story’s true magic.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

A retelling of Russian folklore with complete seriousness: the domovoi, the rusalka, the spirits of the forest - rendered with such conviction that you believe in them completely. Arden’s book shares Spinning Silver’s cold, folkloric atmosphere and its interest in young women who refuse the roles assigned to them.

The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)#

The great ancestor of the literary fairy tale: Carter’s collection retells the classic fairy tales with a feminist, gothic sensibility. It is darker and stranger than Novik’s book, but it shares the conviction that the old stories are alive, and that they have more to say than the versions we were told as children.

If You Loved the Winter: Cold Magic, Done Right#

The Staryk are the kings of winter, and their realm is a place of ice and frost and fairy coldness. The defining atmosphere of Spinning Silver is its winter - and the way the cold is both beautiful and terrifying. These books share the cold.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Arden’s Russia is a place of real winters - snow, frost, and the cold that is both physical and spiritual. The Bear and the Nightingale shares Spinning Silver’s love of winter, and its conviction that the cold can be beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)#

The essential winter story: Narnia under the White Witch’s spell, “always winter and never Christmas.” Lewis’s book is the ancestor of every winter fantasy, and it shares Spinning Silver’s understanding of winter as a kind of enchantment - beautiful, dangerous, and waiting to be broken.

East (Edith Pattou)#

A retelling of the fairy tale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”: a girl who travels to the ends of the earth to rescue the prince she loves, who has been taken by the troll queen. Pattou’s book shares Spinning Silver’s cold, folkloric atmosphere and its conviction that the old stories can carry real weight.

If You Loved the Bargains: Deals With the Fae and Their Prices#

The engine of Spinning Silver is the bargain: Miryem’s talent attracts the Staryk king, and the book is about the deal she makes and the price of it. These books are about bargains of the same kind.

Spinning Silver, and the Art of the Bargain#

The book’s deepest subject is bargaining - and what it means to be good at it. Miryem is a moneylender’s daughter, raised to understand value, interest, and the cost of things. When the Staryk king offers her a bargain, she is not the helpless girl of the fairy tale; she is a woman who knows exactly what things are worth. The book is about the way she turns the bargain against him - the way she uses her understanding of value to escape the trap that caught the fairy tale’s heroine. It is a feminist retelling in the truest sense: it gives the girl the knowledge that lets her win.

An Enchantment of Ravens (Margaret Rogerson)#

Isobel is a portrait painter in a world where the fair folk cannot lie - and when she paints sorrow in the eyes of the autumn prince, she must travel to the fairy realm to answer for it. The book is about bargains with the fae, art, and the cost of both, and it shares Spinning Silver’s fascination with the deals humans make with the fair folk.

The Cruel Prince (Holly Black)#

Jude is a mortal girl raised in the fairy court, and her story is one long bargain - with the fae, with her own survival, with the crown. Black’s book is darker and sharper than Novik’s, but it shares the conviction that the fae are dangerous, that bargains have prices, and that a clever mortal can hold her own.

If You Loved the Heroines: Women Who Make Their Own Way#

Spinning Silver has not one but three heroines - Miryem, the moneylender; Wanda, the peasant girl; and Irina, the duke’s daughter - and the book interweaves their stories with masterful control. These books have women of the same kind.

Spinning Silver, and the Three Women#

One of the book’s great achievements is its ensemble: three women from three very different places in society, each making her own bargain with a world that gives women no way at all. Miryem uses her mind; Wanda uses her endurance; Irina uses her wit. The book interweaves their stories with complete control, and the way they converge in the final pages is one of the most satisfying structures in modern fantasy. It is a book about women helping women - about the ways they save each other, the bargains they make together, the winter they survive as a unit.

Uprooted (Naomi Novik)#

Agnieszka is the girl everyone underestimated - not beautiful, not talented, not what anyone expected - and the book is about her discovery of what she actually is. She is Miryem’s spiritual sister: the girl who turns out to be the story’s true magic.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya is the girl with the second sight - the gift her grandmother had, the gift the Church calls witchcraft. Like Novik’s heroines, she refuses the roles assigned to her - wife, nun, quiet daughter - and insists on being herself. The three heroines of Novik’s and Arden’s books are a constellation of the same star.

If You Loved the Jewish Story: Faith, Community, and Magic#

One of the things that makes Spinning Silver special is its Jewish heroine and its Jewish community - Miryem’s faith and her people are not decoration but part of the story’s fabric. These books share that grounding.

Spinning Silver, and the Weight of Community#

The book is set in a small Jewish community, and the community is not background - it is the point. Miryem’s family, her neighbors, her faith: they are what she is protecting, and they are what give her strength. The book’s winter is not just the Staryk king’s winter; it is the historical winter of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, the pogroms and the persecutions, the knowledge that safety is never guaranteed. The book carries that weight with complete seriousness, and it is one of the reasons the novel resonates so deeply: it is a fantasy that remembers the real history of its people.

The Golem and the Jinni (Helene Wecker)#

A golem - a creature of clay, made to serve - and a jinni - a being of fire - find themselves in New York City in 1899, two immigrants among millions. The golem was made by a rabbi, and the book is rooted in Jewish folklore and the immigrant experience. It shares Spinning Silver’s conviction that fantasy and history belong together, and its reverence for the traditions it draws on.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon)#

An alternate history in which Jewish refugees settled in Alaska: a murder mystery set in a Yiddish-speaking frontier town. Chabon’s book is stranger and more literary than Novik’s, but it shares the delight in Jewish culture and history, and its conviction that the stories of the Jewish people are worth telling in every genre.

If You Loved the Cold King: The Fae as They Should Be#

The Staryk king is one of the great fantasy antagonists: cold, alien, beautiful, and genuinely other - not a man in a costume but a being of winter. These books have fae of the same kind.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

The beings of Arden’s Russia are genuinely other - the spirits of the forest, the winter king Morozko, beings who are not human and do not pretend to be. The book shares Spinning Silver’s conviction that the fae should feel alien, and that their otherness is part of their power.

The Iron Fey series (Julie Kagawa)#

Meghan Chase discovers that her best friend is actually a faery prince, and that she is the daughter of the Summer King - and the series follows her into the fairy realm. It is a younger, more romantic version of the fae, but it shares Spinning Silver’s fascination with the courts of the fae and their dangerous politics.

If You Loved the Multiple Perspectives: Many Voices, One Story#

Spinning Silver is told in multiple first-person voices, and the way they interleave is one of the book’s great pleasures. These books use the same structure.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Arden’s book is told in close third person, but it shares Spinning Silver’s interest in the community around the heroine - the household, the village, the spirits. The two books feel like siblings in their attention to the world around the magic.

The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)#

A novel told in the voices of five women - Orleanna Price and her four daughters - as they follow their missionary father to the Belgian Congo. It is not fantasy, but it shares Spinning Silver’s conviction that multiple voices can tell a truth no single narrator can reach, and its interest in women finding their way in a world that gives them no way at all.

Building Your Own Winter: A Reading Order#

Here is a suggested path that moves from the closest match outward:

• Start with Uprooted for Novik’s other great retelling.
• Move to The Bear and the Nightingale for the cold, folkloric companion.
• Try The Golem and the Jinni for the Jewish historical fantasy.
• Pick up The Cruel Prince for the darker fae.
• End with East for the fairy-tale retelling in the same cold register.

For more books with this kind of magic, our family-friendly books without graphic violence list gathers fantasies that are rich without being rough, and our meaningful no-spice romance list helps you find love stories that are romantic without being explicit. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another door to open.

The Silver That Never Tarnishes#

Spinning Silver endures because it is a book about women who make their own way - who take the bargains the world offers and turn them to their own ends. Miryem is not the helpless girl of the fairy tale; she is the woman who knows what things are worth, and who uses that knowledge to survive the winter. The book’s triumph is the way it honors the old story while rewriting it: the girl is still the one who must spin gold, but she is also the one who decides what the gold is for. The books on this list are full of women like her - Agnieszka, Vasya, the golem, the jinni, girls and women who refuse to be the coin. Step into their winters, and you will come out stronger.