These 50 short stories—from a Galatea retelling by Madeline Miller to a reimagining of Odysseus’s dog Argos by Joy Williams, and many more—reinvents mythological figures in ways that are both beautiful and strange. Persephone has lived a comfortable life, but not a free one. When she meets Hades, goddess of the Underworld, she is offered the first choice of her life: stay in Mount Olympus, or pursue her own destiny in Hades’s realm. But when Persephone descends to the land of the dead, she finds something as dangerous and fulfilling as freedom: love. After Helen’s mother dies, she moves in with her father, who now lives in London instead of Mount Olympus. When she meets a boy she wants to bring into her life, she struggles to keep her family’s identities a secret while trying to live a normal life. But the goddess Hera has chosen a different path: killing other gods to prolong her own life and becoming an “anti-god.” The Goddess War has begun and Athena’s only hope of survival is to fight for it. What would it look like if the gods of Mount Olympus were living in modern-day New York City? Marie Phillips imagines Artemis as a dog walker, Dionysus as a DJ, and Apollo as a TV psychic. When a battle breaks out between two of the gods in their new home, it’s only a matter of time before humans get caught in the crossfire. When she is married to the otherworldly King Amar, Maya is whisked away to Akaran—a world full of secrets that demand to be heard. To save the fates of those she loves, Maya must solve a centuries-old mystery that may put her own life on the line.
