"The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- by the internationally acclaimed writer, newly retranslated and in one English-language volume for the first time, with a new introduction by the author. These first major works of fiction by Haruki Murakami center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat. Powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas...

The novelist records the anguish and triumphs of a young painter as he emerges into the great world of art and rejects all else.

"Gods should never meddle in the affairs of mortals, but Xie Lian is not one to follow the rules when lives are at risk. He spits in the face of heaven and its laws and descends in a fury to save his country from drought and civil war. Yet this golden child gets a harsh dose of reality when he discovers just how little one individual--even a god--can do to save a crumbling nation. As the people reject and betray him, one young soldier stands by Xie...

"The dead don't talk. I don't know why". But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best...

"The Reverend of Empty Words, a monster that feeds off the fears of the fortunate, is hunting Xie Lian's friend, the Wind Master Shi Qingxuan. Knowing that his abysmal luck inoculates him from the creature's power, Xie Lian doesn't hesitate to throw himself into harm's way--to Hua Cheng's horror and panic. But another one of the Four Calamities may be closer than anyone knows, and even a ghost as powerful as Hua Cheng can lose control under the right...

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, fastidious Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is inevitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp by entering into relationships with other women. Set in Lawrence's...

Kid is an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city's sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took...