In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

Lilith Iyapo has given birth to what looks like a normal human boy named Akin. But Akin actually has five parents: a male and female human, a male and female Oankali, and a sexless Ooloi. The Oankali and Ooloi are part of an alien race that rescued humanity from a devastating nuclear war, but the price they exact is a high one the aliens are compelled to genetically merge their species with other races, drastically altering both in the process. There...

The human race, now infertile, fights to maintain its identity when the alien species, Oankali, offers to trade genetic material and bioengineering at the price of metamorphosing a new kind of being.

"...As I gathered these poems...they seemed to flow together like linked movements in a musical composition. Thus, I began to think of them as suites of poems whose preoccupations or leitmotifs are related. In one movement: grief and the impulse to honor the "saints" in my personal and creative life. In another: the sacramental power of works of art and the natural wold to illuminate life and loss. Finally, poems born of opposing, but not mutually...

In the parable of the sower, Jesus foretold all the ways the world would try to reject God's Word: "Rocks will be thrown at the righteous. Dirty birds will try to steal your peace and assurance. Briars will try to choke out the clear truth with noise and confusion." Those words are more relevant today than ever before as we face a world in turmoil, where everyone chooses their own truth and believers are mocked. In this fresh and timely look a a familiar...

An NPR Books Great Read: Two never-before-published stories from the archives of one of science fiction's all-time masters.
The novella "A Necessary Being" showcases Octavia E. Butler's ability to create alien yet fully believable "others." Tahneh's father was a Hao, one of a dwindling race whose leadership abilities render them so valuable that their members are captured and forced to govern. When her father dies, Tahneh steps into his...

Retells the story of the sower who scatters seeds on hard ground, on rocky soil, in the thorns, and in good soil.

Ten of the Bible's most famous parables are retold here in this lively and poignant collection.