In Holt, Colorado, widower Louis Waters is initially thrown when the widowed Addie Moore suggests that they spend time together, in bed, to stave off loneliness. "No, not sex," she clarifies. "I'm talking about getting through the night. And lying warm in bed, companionably." Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. His...

All the fruits gather together and enjoy a rhyming party, but poor Orange feels left out because he does not rhyme with anything -- until Apple invents a new word.

A wandering cat brightens the lives of six lonely people and persuades all of them to feed him until a near accident brings them all together.

Cold and poverty define Hanna Renstrom's childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1905, at nineteen, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life. But none of her hopes--or fears--prepares her for the life she will lead. After two brief marriages, she finds herself a widow twice over, and the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white supremacy rule, where she is isolated within society by her...

Valancy Stirling, an inhibited twenty-nine-year-old spinster, undergoes a total personality change when a doctor tells her she has no more than one year to live. Oppressed by family and small-town prejudice, her apparently imminent death gives her the courage to assert herself and seek love.

"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 lonely girl who lives on a very small island longs to go the other island that seems more green and interesting than her home.

"Every day, in a house by the sea, a little boy watches his father leave for a long day's work. One night, a great storm washes a small whale onto the beach. The boy discovers the whale is a good listener. The father discovers the boy is lonely. Together, they return the whale to the sea. And from that day on, the boy learns that the father can be a good listener too"--

"A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami. The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like "With the Beatles," "Cream," and "On a Stone Pillow") are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood -- "Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova," "Carnaval," "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey"...

A lonely dinosaur wanders the barren desert of the Southwest, looking for a companion.