Ocean State Libraries

Le Guin's Hainish series begins with the assumption that centuries ago humanoids from the planet Hain ventured through the solar system establishing colonies on various planets including Earth. For mysterious reasons these colonies lose all contact and knowledge of each other until the 21st century when an attempt is made to establish a galactic league. Individual stories in this loosely organized series explore the inherent communication difficulties...

"A dazzling collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" ( The Washington Post ) is showcased like never before....

"Farah moves into Liberty House--an arcadia, a community in harmony with nature--at the tender age of six, with her family. The commune's spiritual leader, Arcady, preaches equality, non-violence, anti-speciesism, free love, and uninhibited desire for all, regardless of gender, age, looks, or ability. On her fifteenth birthday, Farah learns she is intersex, and begins to question the confines of gender, and the hypocritical principles those within...

Peter, the only boy among four siblings born to Chinese immigrants, is convinced he is a girl and must fight the confines of a small town as well as the expectations of his parents to forge his own path into adulthood.

An “absorbing . . . beautifully written” debut about the trials of growing up unique in a restrictive environment (The New York Times Book Review).
 
In 1968, in a remote part of Canada, a child is born—a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret: the baby’s parents and a trusted neighbor. Together, the adults make the...

"SHORT-LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else. How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child...

"Building on the success of All City, here is a wry, and at the same time dark and risk-taking, story collection from author (and baker) Alex DiFrancesco that pushes the boundaries of transgender awareness and filial bonds. Here is the hate between 16-year-old Junie, who is transitioning, and their mom's boyfriend Chad when the family moves into Chad's house on Lake Erie. And here is the love being tested between Sawyer and his dad, who named his...

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

This debut novel from preeminent science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin introduces her brilliant Hainish series, set in a galaxy seeded by the planet Hain with a variety of humanoid species, including that of Earth. Over the centuries, the Hainish colonies have evolved into physically and culturally unique peoples, joined by a League of All Worlds.

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated

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