In an alternate 1984 Tokyo, two lonely people — a fitness instructor who secretly kills men who abuse women and a math teacher who becomes embroiled in literary and criminal intrigue after rewriting a strange manuscript by a mysterious girl — find themselves drawn into a subtly altered reality marked by a second moon and inhabited by enigmatic supernatural entities known as the Little People; as cult power, bureaucratic sleuths, and past traumas close in, their separate journeys to locate one another become a haunting meditation on fate, memory, and the human need for connection.

Две параллельные линии повествования — женщина, выполняющая опасные задания, и молодой преподаватель, втянутый в переписывание загадочной рукописи — постепенно сходятся в слегка искажённой версии Токио 1984 года, где появляются вторая луна и таинственные «маленькие люди». Один персонаж пытается разобраться с прошлым и организованным злом, другой — с тайной, способной изменить реальность; их поиски правды и друг друга переплетены темами одиночества, насилия и зыбкой грани между обычным миром и мистикой.

Four young friends in contemporary Ireland—two close women and the men in their lives—navigate friendships, romances, and creative work while exchanging candid emails and messages that reveal their doubts, desires, and moral questions. The novel maps intimate conversations about love, loneliness, class, labor and the responsibilities of making art in an anxious, media-saturated world, blending wry humor with melancholy as personal tensions and political unease slowly complicate their relationships.

A linked set of short stories probes the emotional aftershocks of a devastating earthquake through the lives of disparate characters whose routines are ruptured by grief, guilt and sudden dislocation. Blending spare, melancholic realism with surreal intrusions—a talking giant frog, strange apparitions and uncanny coincidences—the tales explore loneliness, the longing for connection, and the fragile ways people try to rebuild meaning after catastrophe, turning small domestic moments into potent metaphors for trauma and quiet possibility.

A linked sequence of short narratives follows men at successive stages of life, each story a compact, sharply observed episode—on trips, in bedrooms, at offices and in transit—that together map the shifting shapes of modern masculinity. With spare, often darkly comic prose, the collection probes loneliness, desire, small cruelties and the quiet failures and reassessments that punctuate adulthood, revealing how fleeting encounters and interior compromises accumulate into a portrait of aging, vulnerability and disconnection.

A probing, often wry examination of how contemporary life—economic pressures, social media, changing gender roles, and the erosion of traditional rituals—has reshaped longing, commitment, and intimacy, blending cultural criticism and personal reflection to ask what love can mean in an age of upheaval.

A curmudgeonly, rule-bound widower plans to end his life until a lively young family moves in next door and slowly draws him back into his community; through reluctant acts of help, stubborn loyalty, and unexpected friendships he reveals a life shaped by deep love and loss. Flashbacks and neighborhood vignettes peel away the gruff exterior to show the tenderness, humor, and sacrifices that drove him into isolation, while present-day connections—particularly with a determined pregnant neighbor—spark small acts of practical heroism and quiet redemption. The story mixes dark humor and poignant grief to celebrate how human connection and everyday kindness can resurrect a life that seemed finished.