Nocturns appears to be a variant or misspelled listing of Nocturnes, Ishiguro's 2009 collection of five stories about music and its disappointments. The tales follow musicians and others on the edges of the music world, among them a saxophonist, a faded singer in Venice and a songwriter at a hotel. Gently comic and wistful, they explore talent, envy, love and compromise, and how people carry on when life has not matched their early hopes.