"The ever-delightful, insatiably curious Edinburgh philosopher and amateur sleuth returns to take on a case unlike any she's had before--this one with paranormal implications--in the tenth installment of this beloved author's consistently best-selling series. From a small town outside Edinburgh comes the news that a young boy has been recounting vivid recollections of a past life: a perfect description of an island off the coast of Scotland which...

"An exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential seventeenth- and eighteenth-century feminist philosophers Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Catharine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and a searing look at the author's experience of patriarchy and sexism in academia. Growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions. In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician, the...

"Thirty leading women philosophers draw on and advance the rich heritage of the philosophical tradition to explore topics of pressing interest for today.0Women of Ideas is edited by Suki Finn, based upon interviews by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, from Philosophy Bites, the world's foremost philosophy podcast. These conversations illuminate diverse aspects of being human: personal, social, ethical, and political. The contributors discuss the...

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Original Selection
In this warm, intelligently observed novella, Isabel Dalhousie, Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful heroine, learns valuable lessons about inviting the past (and everyone in it) back into your life.
 
Isabel Dalhousie—philosopher, mother and friend—has generously agreed to host the opening dinner for her school reunion weekend. Twenty-five former classmates...

A couple who are old friends of Isabel's ask for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster position at their alma mater. The board has four final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers in herself...

"Our favorite moral philosopher is caught up in a delicate dispute between members of a prominent family as her husband, Jamie, is dragged into his own internecine rivalry. Isabel accepts an invitation to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but soon finds herself swept up in an all-too-familiar dilemma. David is the grandson of a Scottish clan chief and is supportive of Scottish nationalism. But his fervent beliefs...

"A deeply researched biography of the prominent and divisive writer Ayn Rand, whose pro-capitalist novels and nonfiction have influenced three generations of Americans. Biographer Alexandra Popoff traces the life and creative achievement of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), one of America's most provocative writers and whose best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have enjoyed impressive longevity. Born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg,...