Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance make a good pair ... sort of highlighting Murakami's gift for crafting situations that are just on the far side of odd. Sheep Chase can also be a pretty manageable summer read, and probably won't be as fast of a read as Sputnik .

as far as Vintage's publishing schedule ... one can only hope. According to this page (http://www.shimonoseki-cu.ac.jp/~uekura/haruki/) translations of his earlier works have been published by Kodansha Int'l. I was able to pick up a translated copy of Norwegian Wood at a Japanese bookstore called Kinokuniya years before Vintage released an American copy. You might want to look into that venue if you're impatient about tracking down his older novels.