From the bestselling and award-winning novelist, Octavia E. Butler. Completing the Patternist series, a new edition of her cult classic novel, now in print for the first time in fifty years.When Alanna flees a plague-scarred Earth to a new planet, she believes she has found a peaceful new home for humanity. Instead, she finds herself caught between two battling civilisations - the Kohn and Tehkohn. Now she must play a dangerous game to survive.Make alliances, while plotting betrayals. Assimilate, while retaining her humanity. Open her heart, while risking everything.Alanna knows that the mission of her fellow colonists is to preserve the human race. But what if the best way to retain her humanity is to leave it all behind?A PATTERNIST NOVELThis long-awaited new volume includes new essays from scholar and the Huntington Library's Octavia E. Butler Fellow, Alyssa Collins, along with 'A Necessary Being' - the only short fiction set in the Patternist universe, completing the Patternist series for readers everywhere.