Sputnik Sweetheart (Vintage Publishing)

Combining the seductions of "Norwegian Wood" with the complex mysteries of "The Wind-Up Bird chronicle, " here is Murakami at his most intriguing, mystifying, and satisfying. In an urbane Japan of jazz bars, Jack Kerouac, and the Beatles, a college student, falls in love with Summire. But her devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes any personal commitments.