Alexander McCall Smith

"Angus Lordie is approached in the park by a shadowy, Deep Throat like figure with government secrets to share, who mistakes him for a journalist. Now Angus is privy to some controversial plans of the Scottish Parliament -- but just what is he meant to do about it? Elsewhere, Big Lou's husband Bob hires a personal trainer who changes his entire outlook on life, much to Lou's dismay. At the schoolhouse, young Bertie Pollock's class has a new ringleader,...

As the new manager of the Perfect Passion Company, Katie's mission is to help the lonely hearts of Edinburgh. With the assistance of her amiable and handsome office neighbor, William, she finds herself using a personal touch to find matches for the city's lovelorn citizens. When an airline pilot comes to her looking for a woman to take care of him, Katie sends him to cooking school. The case of a hotelier with a particularly overbearing mother may...

When twelve-year-old twins Ben and Fee MacTavish, along with their schoolmates, head to a small island in the Caribbean aboard the School Ship Tobermory, they learn extraordinary details about their captain's past and come face to face with modern-day pirates.

The students and crew aboard the School Ship Tobermory head to Australia to take part in a tall ships race, but an unexpected change of course brings a different kind of adventure.

"In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What must it have been like to be them? We hold our breath for them. Our heart beats faster for them. We look again at the photograph in a new light, and say Yes, it might have happened just like that. This...

"Caroline Dering, a widow with three grown children, lives a cheerful, quiet life near the idyllic English village of Ashbridge. But things are about to liven up, as daughter Leda announces a problematic engagement to the son of the local squire, son James returns from service and pursues romance with the squire's independent daughter, and sister Harriet, a famous actress whose latest play has bombed, retreats to Ashbridge for a break. Then there's...

Follows Mma Ramotste, a recently bereaved woman, as she sets up the only woman-run Private Detective Agency in Botswana and her attempts to get it off the ground. She gets help from Mma Makutsi, her new secretary, and Mr. JLB Matekoni, the owner and super mechanic of the wonderful Speedy Motors. Mma Ramotste takes on cases, meets many new people who need her help - from a woman who thinks the man who has turned up at her door is not her father, to...

In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of the only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies and others, investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important "Government Man," and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Yet her business is having money problems, and...

"This latest installment of the beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series finds Botswana's premier detective agency as busy as ever, with no shortage of sensitive situations requiring Mma Ramotswe's keen eye and discerning input. Through it all, Mma Ramotswe will demonstrate that there are solutions to all manner of difficulties, there to be discovered as long as one is led by kindness, grace, and logic, and can rely on the wise counsel of close...

"Precious Ramotswe is back and, as usual, her plate is full! She's called in to tackle a mysterious disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter's school...Her infinitely trustworthy assistant, Grace Makutsi, is having trouble adjusting to wedded bliss, a problem to test even the formidable talents of Mma Ramotswe...And the estimable Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Investigation--the No. 1 Ladies' prized manual--has arrived, right...