This is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Kea Miyakana Tis. Have you ever read a story and thought, dang, that character deserved better?

Well, today, two books that take the power of disappointment and convert it into new narratives. Both books offer new tales about the women of Greek mythology, including a Y-A approach to the classic myth of Arakne.

That book, in a little bit, but first, Circe.

The powerful witch from the Odyssey, who in the original mythology, falls to her knees and begs for mercy when she encounters the hero Odysseus.

Author Madeline Miller felt like that tale gave Circe a raw deal.

So she wrote a book, appropriately titled,

Cersie, offering a much more nuanced telling of the nymphs rise to power

and what happened after Odysseus and his men left her island.

Here she is with NPR's Barry Hardiman.

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Circe's name means sorceress, and we often describe women as Cerses who are dangerous or irresistible. But your Circe, she sort of starts out very remarkably unpromisingly in a way, doesn't she?

Yes. Well, I was really interested in the fact that aside from being, from becoming the first witch of Western literature, she starts out as a nymph. And in the world of Greek

gods, things were incredibly hierarchical. So life was pretty good for you if you were Zeus or

Athena. But for those who were nymphs, the lesser lesser goddesses, you were pretty much prey.

The only power you had was pretty much your divinity. And so I wanted to start with that identity first and then talk about how she grew into her witchcraft.

And Circe has to learn her craft.

Yes.

Witchcraft in the ancient world was something that you had to really work at.

You had to harvest the herbs and do the right things to the herbs at the right time, saying the right words.

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