Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go) has made his name as a pitch-perfect prose stylist, but in his youth he dreamed of a career as a singer-songwriter. With his new book, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall already drawing raves in Ishiguro's native England he taps that personal history, bringing his perennial themes of miscommunication and missed connections to a cycle of stories linked by music. Radhika Jones