Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler

A posthumous pair of early, previously unpublished stories that reveal the author's emerging craft: one centers on a woman with unusual perceptual gifts who seeks out and protects vulnerable, potentially gifted children, and the other follows an outsider whose presence unsettles a fragile community; together they blend intimate character study and speculative premise to probe power, belonging, identity, and the moral costs of protection and control.