Book 3

The star-spanning story of humanity’s colonization of other planets, Ursula K. Le Guin’s visionary Hainish novels and stories redrew the map of modern science fiction, making it a rich field for literary explorations of “the nature of human nature,” as Margaret Atwood has described Le Guin’s subject. Now, for the first time, the complete Hainish novels and stories are collected in a definitive two-volume Library of America edition, with new introductions by the author. This second volume in a definitive two-volume edition gathers Le Guin’s final two Hainish novels, The Word for World Is Forest, in which Earth enslaves another planet to strip its natural resources, and The Telling, the harrowing story of a society which has suppressed its own cultural heritage. Rounding out the volume are seven short stories and the story suite Five Ways to Forgiveness, published here in full for the first time. The endpapers feature a full-color chart of the known worlds of Hainish descent.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Book 4

Ursula K. Le Guin's richly-imagined vision of a post-apocalyptic California, in a newly expanded version prepared shortly before her death


This fourth volume in the Library of America’s definitive Ursula K. Le Guin edition presents her most ambitious novel and finest achievement, a mid-career masterpiece that showcases her unique genius for world building. Framed as an anthropologist’s report on the Kesh, survivors of ecological catastrophe living in a future Napa Valley, Always Coming Home (1985) is an utterly original tapestry of history and myth, fable and poetry, story- telling and song. Prepared in close consultation with the author, this expanded edition features new material added just before her death, including for the first time two “missing” chapters of the Kesh novel Dangerous People. The volume con- cludes with a selection of Le guin’s essays about the novel’s genesis and larger aims, a note on its editorial and publication history, and an updated chronology of Le guin’s life and career.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Book 5

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Nebula Award–winning young adult fantasy series—gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector’s edition for readers of all ages

Teenagers struggle to come to terms with their own mysterious and magical gifts as they come-of-age in the far-flung Western Shore.

This fifth volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work presents a trilogy of coming-of-age stories set in the Western Shore—a world where young people find themselves struggling not just against racism, prejudice, and slavery, but with how to live with the mysterious and magical gifts they have been given. All three novels feature the generous voice and deeply human concerns that mark all Le Guin’s work, and together they form an elegant anthem to the revolutionary and transformative power of words and storytelling.

In Gifts, Orrec and Gry will inherit both their families’ domains and their “gifts,” the ability to communicate with animals, or control a mind, or maim or kill with only a word and gesture. Both discover their gifts are not what they thought. In Voices, Memer lives in a city conquered by fundamentalist and superstitious soldiers who have made reading and writing forbidden. But in Memer’s house there is a secret room where the last few books in the city have been hidden. And in the Nebula Award-winning Powers, the young slave Gavir can remember any book after reading it just once. It makes him valuable, but it also makes him a threat. Gav sets out to understand who he is, where he came from, and what his gift means.

This deluxe edition features Le Guin’s own previously unseen hand-drawn maps. Included in an appendix are essays and interviews about the novels, as well as Le Guin’s pronunciation guide to the names and languages of the Western Shore.