11 Greek Mythology Novels Your Students Will Love

Your students probably met (or will meet) Circe in ninth grade: she’s the witch who turns Odysseus’s men into pigs and keeps him captive for an entire year. In Homer’s version of events, Circe is a villain. But what if there’s more to the story? What if there’s more to Circe herself?

Miller tells Circe’s story, beginning with her lonely childhood as the unattractive and powerless daughter of the Titan Helios and the naiad Perse. Circe falls in love with a mortal, and while she doesn’t have powers of her own, she hones her skill in witchcraft, transforming her beloved into a god. When he rejects her in favor of the nymph Scylla, Circe reacts in anger, turning Scylla into the six-headed monster we know and love from the Odyssey as well.

Banished to Aiaia by Zeus, Circe continues to develop her witchcraft skills while also encountering a wide variety of figures from Greek mythology: Hermes, Daedalus, the Minotaur, Jason and Medea, and, of course, Odysseus. Her story is compelling, and we end up feeling enormous empathy for this woman who longs for love and acceptance but is so often used and abandoned by the heroes of Greek mythology. It’s refreshing to read a rich characterization of one of the women so often pushed to the side to tell the stories of male heroes, and while the novel, written for adults, might not appeal to (or be entirely appropriate for) younger students, we think older students will enjoy it.

One review of Cole’s gorgeous novel in verse warns readers, “Get ready to have your heart beautifully broken.” What a perfect way to sum up this tough, beautiful, and important story.

Alicia Rivers is the center of gossip at her high school, called all sorts of names because she has a reputation for having a lot of sex. What Alicia’s classmates don’t realize is that Alicia was sexually abused by a teacher at their school and frequently taken advantage of by older men who don’t (or refuse to) see her as the child she still is. When she starts receiving anonymous notes that the teacher at their school is abusing another student, she is forced to decide whether she will face what happened to her or continue to hide it.

As Alicia makes a new friend in suspension and falls for the new girl at school, she begins to learn she’s not as alone as she thinks she is, and that maybe the girl she was before “it” happened is still there somewhere.

Cole uses the myth of Medusa, with her head of snakes and a gaze that turns anyone to stone, to powerful effect. In some versions of the Medusa myth, Poseidon rapes Medusa in Athena’s temple, and Athena turns Medusa (not Poseidon) into a snake-headed monster as punishment for defiling her temple. Medusa is a perfectly-apt allusion for this story about young women who are blamed for their sexuality in a world where men constantly objectify and victimize them, and the novel tackles important themes of race, sexuality, and female oppression.

Naturally, this is a book where content warnings abound. The frank discussion of sex, while not graphic, does make this a more appropriate fit for older students, and we would probably steer away from making it an official First Chapter Friday recommendation. However, we think it’s a powerful read that, unfortunately, is relevant and hopefully empowering to many of our students. A recent study by the CDC found that 18% of teenage girls and 22% of those who identify as LGBTQ+ have been victims of some kind of sexual violence. While we may want to protect our students from violent content, many of them are facing traumatic violence, and there is healing power to be found in books that remind them they are not alone, they are not defined by what has happened to them, and there is life and hope ahead of them.

Born into the House of Perseides, Lore was trained to be a hunter in the Agon. As punishment for their rebellion, Zeus makes nine Greek gods mortal for seven days every seven years, and in that time period, an event known as the Agon, any mortal who is able to kill them gains that god’s power and immortality.

After a family tragedy in the last Agon, Lore tried to escape from the world she was brought up in, using her fighting skills to win underground boxing matches, but when her old friend Castor shows up with a warning and she discovers the goddess Athena bleeding on her doorstep, Lore is drawn into a tenuous alliance determined to take down Wrath, the new Ares, who seems intent on destroying the city Lore grew up in.

Who can Lore trust? Can she escape the tragedy of her past? What’s going on with Castor, who seems . . . different this year?

Lore is an exciting adventure through the streets of New York City and much of Greek mythology, and Bracken also explores topics like fate, family, sacrifice, and the power women hold in a world usually dominated by men. Your students who are ready to age out of Percy Jackson will find this one hard to put down, especially once it reaches the halfway point (a review confirmed by one of Steph’s students).

This gorgeous story, at first glance, doesn’t seem to belong on a list of Greek mythology novels. It tells the intertwining stories of Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette, all caught in the events of World War I. Hazel and James meet at a dance a week before James must go to war, and we follow their love story as James goes to the trenches while Hazel, a pianist, stays at home. Colette is a Belgian orphan who works as a nurse in a military camp and becomes close friends with Hazel, and Aubrey is a Black American musician in the US Army. Aubrey’s experiences in the segregated American military add weight to the novel, making it more than just a love story or a war story.

The novel, however, is narrated by the Greek gods, who have gathered in a hotel room during World War II. Hephaestus has caught his wife, Aphrodite (the goddess of love), with her lover, Ares (the god of war), and placed her on trial before an assembly of gods, including Hades (the god of death). The three characters take turns narrating the events, weaving a compelling story about the nature of love and its ability to withstand the horrors of war.

The audiobook is highly praised, utilizing multiple narrators to align with narrators in the story. We used an audio clip for First Chapter Friday, and students enjoyed that it began with music that drew them right into the 1940s hotel setting.

We know this isn’t exactly a Greek mythology novel, but it was so good (and readable) we had to include it here. Whether you’re looking for a resource for yourself or an engaging read for your mythology-obsessed students, you’ve got to check out Stephen Fry’s series. Mythos sets up the basic foundation of Greek mythology, focusing on the creation myths and the complicated family tree of gods and goddesses. Of course, there is some overlap with Heroes, which tells the famous Greek hero stories (Jason, Perseus, and Hercules, among others). And Troy tells the story of the Trojan War.

Fry is a British comedian who studied English literature at the University of Cambridge. His Greek mythology series is excellent. It’s extensively researched, presenting comprehensive coverage of the different variations of the myths we all know so well, but it’s also witty and highly readable. The information is broken into short segments, allowing you to step in and out of the book when you have time. And Troy reads like an action novel. Steph devoured it in one afternoon (that’s not uncommon for her, but still), and it made a very complicated story much easier to summarize for our ninth graders before we began The Odyssey.

Keep in mind that Fry is writing for adults and a thorough discussion of Greek mythology definitely includes sex and violence, so while not gratuitous, the book does contain material that may be inappropriate for younger readers.

Odds are, your students already have some familiarity with Percy Jackson, but we can’t provide a list of Greek mythology novels without mentioning Rick Riordan, the king of mythology-based novels for young people.

The original Percy Jackson series is fantastic. Percy Jackson is having a rough time: he lives with his single mom and her horrible boyfriend, he struggles in school thanks to dyslexia and ADHD, and as the novel begins, he’s not getting along with his substitute teacher, Ms. Dodd. We (and Percy) quickly learn that his father is actually the Greek god Poseidon. Percy has been accused of stealing Zeus’s famous lightning bolt, and the monsters of Greek mythology are after him. His mentor, Grover (a satyr), leads him to Camp Half-Blood, where he meets the other half-blood children of the Greek gods and goddesses, and he is ultimately sent on a quest to recover the missing lightning bolt. Along the way, he uncovers a much larger plot by the Titans, who have been banished to Tartarus, to regain their power, which drives the five-book series.

The engaging stories keep the pages turning, but our favorite part is seeing Riordan’s take on mythology. The pages are full of characters from Greek mythology, and Riordan’s premise that the gods move along with the seat of Western civilization means he’s translating ancient stories into the modern United States (Mount Olympus, for example, is now the Empire State Building). It’s a delight to see how he makes it work.

And really, Riordan has created a mythology-based empire. In addition to the Percy Jackson series, he has published the Heroes of Olympus series (weaving Roman mythology into the Camp Half-Blood world), the Kane Chronicles (based on Egyptian mythology), the Magnus Chase series (based on Norse mythology), and the Trials of Apollo series (back to Greek mythology). He has even co-written novels about some of the minor Percy Jackson characters and started a publishing imprint with series (written by authors from underrepresented cultures and backgrounds) bringing Hindu, Mayan, Aztec, Korean, Cuban, West African, Mexican, Mesopotamian, Hmong, Santeria, Ghanaian, Caribbean, Chinese, Navajo, and Filipino mythology to readers of all ages.

The kingdom of Keirdre is ruled by the fae families. Witches and humans are allowed to exist in specific places and roles, but otherwise, the kingdom is surrounded by a protective barrier to keep away other magical beings.

Saiorse Sorkova, however, is a siren living in hiding within the barriers. Disguising her true identity with magic beads that hide her stunning beauty with a burn-scarred face, she works hard at the barracks where she trains as a soldier, earning the coveted top-ranked position and a prestigious job as Prince Hayes’s bodyguard.

What no one else knows, however, is that Saiorse works secretly as an assassin, using her alluring beauty to seduce and kill the men assigned to her. She is, after all, a siren, and killing is an instinct, particularly strong whenever she is near water.

But when Sairose starts receiving blackmail notes threatening to reveal her true identity and Prince Hayes is placed in charge of an investigation into a chain of mysterious murders committed by a remarkably beautiful woman, Saiorse is in trouble. And the more she helps Prince Hayes investigate, the more she begins to realize there are a lot of things in Keirdre that aren’t what they seem.

Burton’s debut novel kept us turning pages to find out what happened next as we were drawn deeper and deeper into her fantastical world. And despite her bloodlust, we found ourselves rooting for Saiorse a little more with every turn of the page.

Miller’s first novel took #BookTok by storm. Quite a few of our students read (and loved) it, and it’s been inescapable if you have any connection to the online book world. Naturally, after loving Circe, we had to check it out.

Miller tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Patroclus, an exiled prince who is Achilles’s childhood companion and eventual lover. His entry into the Trojan War wearing Achilles’s armor (and death at the hands of Hector) is a climactic scene that accelerates the war’s end.

One of Steph’s students explained that the book’s popularity among young adults primarily stems from the very tragic love story, but for readers familiar with Greek mythology, Miller does a lot of interesting things with the Trojan War story. Achilles is strangely flat in the novel, and the famed Greek warriors are rather unlikable. (To be fair, we liked Odysseus for a while, but even that wore off.) This rings true, however, to Homer’s original, and seeing these men through Patroclus’s eyes highlights the contrast between what their culture demands and the horror their behavior can evoke.

By making Achilles and Patroclus lovers, Miller gives their tragic end a deeper resonance, and the perspective raises interesting questions about the way stories change depending on who tells them (the final pages and author’s note reminded us a lot of the final song in Hamilton).

If you and your students know a lot about Greek mythology, there are so many good nuggets here. Do be aware that Miller’s book is written for adults, not teens, so there are a couple sex scenes that probably make the novel more appropriate for older readers. You’ll want to keep your students’ maturity level and local community in mind before recommending this one, but our experience tells us many students will enjoy it.

The world has changed a lot since the moon split in three, causing ocean levels to rise and flood the world as we know it. Citizens traverse the city-nation of Alante on a series of bridges, the Fortuna gang uses brass knuckles to keep local order, and the world is full of other-born, descendants of the Fates, the Muses, the Keres, the Dioscuri, and the Horae.

Io Ora and her two sisters are moira-born, meaning they are descendants of the Fates. They can see the Quilt of threads that connect people to their loves and their lives, but Io, the youngest, is the one with the power to cut threads. Io works in the Silts, the poor part of the Sunken City of Alante, as a private detective, finding the mistresses and addictions her client’s loved ones are attached to and often cutting the strings that tie them to these trouble-causing loves.

When a series of strange murders happens, committed by wraiths, women with severed life-threads who are somehow committing murders in the name of vengeance, Fortuna mob boss Bianca Rossi hires Io to work with her second-in-command, Edei Rhuna, to solve the string of murders. As if the mysterious investigation wasn’t enough, Edei is the mystery person at the end of Io’s fate-thread whom she’s been avoiding.

Io and Edei’s investigation draws them into the murky political world of Alante, and as fantastical as Hatzopoulou’s world is, we start to recognize parallels between its treatment of other-born and our own world’s treatment of immigrants and minorities, raising the potential for interesting discussions.