Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all. In Men Without Women, Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic, marked by the same wry humor and pathos that have defined his entire body of work.

Evie Snow is 82 when she quietly passes away in her sleep, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. It's the way most people wish to leave the world. But when Evie reaches the door of her own private heaven, she finds that she's become her 27-year-old self, and the door won't open. Evie's soul must be light enough to pass through, so she needs to get rid of whatever is making it heavy. For Evie, this means unburdening herself of the three secrets that have weighed her down for over 50 years.

Practical Melanie Middleton hates to admit she can see ghosts. But she's going to have to accept it. An old man she recently met has died, leaving her his historic Tradd Street home, complete with housekeeper, dog - and a family of ghosts anxious to tell her their secrets. Enter Jack Trenholm, a gorgeous writer obsessed with unsolved mysteries. He has reason to believe that diamonds from the Confederate Treasury are hidden in the house. So he turns the charm on with Melanie, only to discover he's the smitten one....

They said write what you know so that's what I did. I wrote dirty, I wrote erotic, I wrote the truth. And then they called me a liar. But it's not me who's lying, it's them. Our story isn't for everyone. It's not even for us. So if you're looking for the fairy tale and the stupid prince on his dumb white horse, move along. You've got a hold of the wrong book. This is not your story, this is not your life, and this is not your opportunity to dip your frightened little toe into the dark pool of water and "try new things" and then pull it out and decide... #NotForMe.

Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime - beginning in Japanese - has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime's happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.

After the untimely deaths of her aunt and mother, young Riley Mays moved from Chicago to her cousins’ Wisconsin farm. Here she found solace in caring for her extraordinary adoptive brother, exploring the surrounding wild nature, and gazing at the mystical moon - a private refuge in which she hides from her most painful memories. But ten years later, now twenty-one, Riley feels too confined by the protective walls she’s erected around herself. When a stranger enters her family’s remote world, Riley senses something he’s hiding, a desire to escape that she understands well.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rayann Germaine, betrayed by her lover, flees in grief and rage. She meets book-store owner Louisa Thatcher, a woman many years her senior, who offers shelter and work...and soon, passion, and a loving place in her life. But Rayann encounters challenges to this new love - from friends who question its wisdom, from her mother who disapproves of this liaison with a woman her own contemporary, from Louisa's son who learns for the first time his mother's true sexuality.

Winter's chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home - a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing 10 years earlier. But this time there's a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.

Pippa wants a second chance. Recently divorced and unhappy at work, she uproots her life to move to a beautiful farmhouse in the countryside, determined to make a fresh start. But Pippa soon realizes that troubles are never far behind. One night, when Pippa is at home alone, a stranger arrives at her front door. Pippa invites him in and, in a moment of madness, makes him an offer she believes could change everything.

When Olivia moves to Port Townsend, her marriage is floundering, and her life is in pieces. She doesn’t know if things with her husband Mark are truly over, or quite why the phone call she longs for on her daughter’s birthday will never come. Joining a letter-writing club seems like a harmless decision. But when she meets Ned, an ex-soldier badly wounded in Afghanistan, this unlooked-for friendship revives unexpected emotions and memories she’d rather forget.

Michael Thomas Ford Mike Monaghan is the bartender at the Engine Room, a meeting place for the small but thriving community of gay men in Cold Falls, New York. As Mike pours beer, wipes glasses and hears everything, he's also witness to the men who come here looking for what they need--sex, direction, friendship, spiritual fulfillment, and love. People like: Stephen Darby--As an accountant, he knows many secrets. But Stephen has his own secret, one he's never been able to share with anyone close to him.

When a beautiful English-speaking young woman named Anya is recruited to be a Russian spy working with the Nazi party, her first thought is that it means she can escape a terrifying situation at home. But when she finds herself sent to work as a land girl in a beautiful corner of England and begins to make friends—ones she knows she may have to betray—she fears she’s made a terrible mistake. The only person she can turn to is her fellow informer, Nikolai, and she finds herself impossibly drawn to his quiet intensity. But being together increases the risk to them both.

Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents”.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow.

Jan Nyman, the ace detective of the covert operations unit of the National Central Police, is sent to a sleepy seaside town to investigate a mysterious death. Nyman arrives in the town dominated by a bizarre holiday village - the ‘hottest beach in Finland’. The suspect: Olivia Koski, who has only recently returned to her old hometown. The mission: find out what happened, by any means necessary.