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.

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.

An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.

The inaugural volume of Library of America’s Ursula K. Le Guin edition gathers her complete Orsinian writings, enchanting, richly imagined historical fiction collected here for the first time. Written before Le Guin turned to science fiction, the novel Malafrena is a tale of love and duty set in the central european country of Orsinia in the early nineteenth century, when it is ruled by the Austrian empire. The stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976) offer brilliantly rendered episodes of personal drama set against a history that spans Orsinia’s emergence as an independent kingdom in the twelfth century to its absorption by the eastern Bloc after World War II. The volume is rounded out by two additional stories that bring the history of Orsinia up to 1989, the poem “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” Le Guin’s first published work, and two never before published songs in the Orisinian language. 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.

When it was first published in 1985, Ursula K. Le Guin’s ambitious and experimental novel Always Coming Home, a tapestry of interwoven stories, poems, histories, myths, and anthropological reports from the fictional Kesh society, included one chapter from a short novel called Dangerous People by Arravna, or Wordriver, which Le Guin had “translated” from the Kesh, the invented language of an invented people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now” in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley, California. Now Library of America presents, for the first time, the full text of the innovative and perceptive novella Dangerous People, which Le Guin completed shortly before her death, making this Le Guin’s final new work. The story of one missing woman and the people around her who may or may not be implicated in her death or disappearance, Dangerous People explores larger questions about what—in relationships, in society—make a person “dangerous”; and in giving us the Kesh perspective, Le Guin ultimately shines a light on our own society’s perceptions of truth, gender, and relationships.

Ursula Le Guin's beloved YA series gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector's edition for every reader 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.

A Study Guide for Mario Puzo's "The Godfather," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.