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Book Summary and Reviews of Mestra by Madeline Miller

Mestra by Madeline Miller

Mestra

A Short Story

by Madeline Miller

  • Publishes:
  • Sep 29, 2026, 80 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A brilliant new short story from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Madeline Miller—her first new work of fiction since the publication of Circe—that vibrantly reimagines the powerful and forgotten myth of Mestra.

A cursed father, a gifted daughter.

Mestra, daughter of the King of Thessaly, is granted a unique gift by Poseidon: the ability to transform into any being she can imagine.

Her father, on the other hand, is cursed: As punishment for disrespecting the goddess Demeter, he is in possession of an unnatural, insatiable hunger.

Devoted Mestra suggests using her new gift to help her father. But if his hunger is bottomless, how much will he take from her? Soon she must decide: Will she keep helping her father survive, or finally break free?

A jewel-like tale of human fallibility, Mestra confirms Madeline Miller as our high priestess of mythology.

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This information about Mestra was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

Madeline Miller is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Song of Achilles and Circe, and the short story Galatea. Her books have been translated into forty languages. Miller studied in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms, and has an MA in Classics from Brown University.

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