The Light-Years Trilogy Books in Order

The Light-Years Trilogy is where Nancy J Cohen first published her blend of romance and far-future adventure, originally under the name Nancy Cane. These books are set in a wider galactic society full of councils, military forces, alien cultures, and political danger, but each story stays centered on a couple caught in the middle of a crisis. The result feels like classic space opera with a strong romantic core.

The scale is big, but the stories stay personal.

In Circle of Light, attorney Sarina Bretton is taken from Earth and told she may be the legendary Great Healer, a woman destined to help stop a devastating plague. That gives the trilogy an immediate mix of wonder, skepticism, and pressure. Sarina is practical, not dreamy, so the book works because she keeps asking the same hard questions a reader would ask. Who wants her, why now, and what if the prophecy is wrong?

The later books keep expanding the world without losing that character focus. Moonlight Rhapsody strands undercover diplomat Rolf Cam'brii on the slave planet Souk, where he forms an uneasy alliance with Ilyssa, a gifted overseer who is trapped by her own circumstances. Starlight Child follows psychic cultural specialist Mara Hendricks and Commander Deke Sage on a rescue mission after an infant is kidnapped. That story adds espionage, suspicion, and a wider conspiracy to the mix.

What carries across the trilogy is Cohen's interest in capable women, difficult choices, and romance under pressure. These are not books where love floats above the plot. Love gets tangled up with duty, law, politics, and survival. Psychic gifts, legends, and unusual abilities all play a part, but the emotional question is usually simple: can two people trust each other when almost everything around them says they should not?

The tone is adventurous and unabashedly romantic, with strange worlds, clear stakes, and a steady stream of motion. If you like older-school science fiction romance that still makes room for mystery, rescues, and big feelings, this trilogy is the place to start.