Six titles that draw inspiration from folk tales

Amanda Jayatissa is the author of My Sweet Girl, which won the International Thriller Writer’s Award for Best First Novel, and You're Invited.

She grew up in Sri Lanka and has lived in the California bay area and British countryside, before relocating back to her sunny island, where she lives with her husband and two Tasmanian-devil-reincarnate huskies.

Jayatissa's new novel is Island Witch.

At CrimeReads she tagged six books that span "across many genres and hail from different corners of the world, but they all draw inspiration from popular myths, lore, and folk tales." One title on the list:

Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Set in Mexico in the 1920s, the story follows Cassiopeia Tun, the granddaughter of a small town patriarch. Cassiopeia’s mother eloped with Cassiopeia’s dark-skinned father, disgracing the family, but had to return to home when her husband died. Cassiopeia is ordered to work as the family maid, and her future seems bleak until she opens a locked chest in her grandfather’s bedroom, and releases an imprisoned Mayan god of death, Hun-Kamé. Hun-Kamé sends Cassiopeia on a life-changing quest— one which features demons, evil spirits, sorcerers and flappers dancing the Charleston.

Read about the other entries in the list.

--Marshal Zeringue