When popular Lizzie Lovett goes missing, seventeen-year-old Hawthorne, a lonely misfit, finds herself becoming obsessed with solving the mystery.

"The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- ... 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 ... center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate the Rat ... Stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas bear all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, giving us ... insight into a...

"Pandora the fox lives alone in a junk yard. She's depressed and has no contact with the outside world. Then, she rescues a blue bird. As she nurses him back to health, the bird collects seeds and trinkets for her. One day, the bird grows strong enough to fly away, but the garden seeds he brought begin to transform Pandora's landscape"--

A young child is determined to cheer up the moon in the sky, which seems to be lonely for its other half.

Eleven-year-old Diana, the gangly, sometimes clumsy, only child on the island of Themyscira, struggles to live up to the high Amazonian standards and longs for someone her own age to whom she can talk.

"A clever pup ends up in a cozy home, and she'll do anything to stay there. She impersonates everything the lonely homeowner needs--a pillow, a footstool, a jacket. But in the end, being herself works best"--

"Dog and Rabbit are both a little lonely and in search of a friend, but Rabbit is initially too distracted by the bunny he sees through the window to notice that Dog is just the friend that he has been looking for"--Provided by publisher.