Alexander McCall Smith

We are once more transported to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and enter the world of Mma Precious Ramotswe and her friends. Mma Ramotswe is engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. She wonders when the wedding date will be set, but she is anxious to aviod putting too much pressure on her fiance. For, indeed, he has other things on his mind - notably a frightening request made of him by Mma Potokwane, the pushy matron of the Orphan Farm. And there is the...

Things go badly awry for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni when he sets out to do something special for their adopted daughter, Motholeli, and it is up to his wife, Mma Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, to extricate him from his problems.

"While gathering material for a photography book about Edinburgh, Alexander McCall Smith found himself inspired to create stories about the people captured in a number of particularly striking photos. A smiling girl leading a younger girl astride a pony, and a boy in a kilt on a tricycle beside them, gives rise to a story of a lifelong romance between the two riders. A dapper, roguish-looking man perching on a lady's knee sparks the story of a ventriloquist...

an Edinburgh philosopher and well-meaning intervener in the affairs of others -- makes a comment that suggests the kind of entertainment "The Lost Art of Gratitude" is going to be. "Somebody had told her," Isabel muses, "that the essence of a good still life was the feeling it inspired that something was just on the point of happening. What was about to happen here?" Not much, it turns out. This literary still life will go on for 56 more pages before...

"Mma Ramotswe has her hands full both at home and in the office. To add to her current challenges, her devoted partner, Grace Makutsi, has decided to branch out on her own and open The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe. But even "Miss 97 Per Cent" can't quite meet all the demands of running a business--not to mention those that a lightning strike makes on her building. Eventually, she'll have to accept all the help she can get--even if it comes from a completely...

Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld despairs over an academic rival's undeserved acclaim and stumbles into a haphazard romance with a charming widow before a mountaineering accident catapults him into unwanted fame.

Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due-a quest which...

Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due- a quest which...

"Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld and his colleagues at the University of Regensburg's Institute of Romance Philology pride themselves on their unwavering commitment to intellectual excellence. They know it is their job to protect a certain civilized approach to the scholarly arts. So when a new deputy librarian, Dr. Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, threatens to drag them all down a path of progressive inclusivity, they are determined to stop her in...