Showing results by author "Alexander McCall Smith" in All Categories

The complete BBC Radio adaptations of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency featuring Botswana's only female private detective agency, run by the irrepressible Precious Ramotswe. Based on the hugely popular novels and brought to life with music and full casts, these evocative productions return us to Botswana, where Precious has more mysteries to solve.

Jamie, a bassoonist, has been invited to play in a prestigious London concert. And they ring too when a wily philosopher, Christopher Dove, reveals a plot to topple Professor Robert Lettuce, a member of Isabel's editorial board. A woman she knew many years ago at school approaches her with a request for help. She has made an awkward discovery as a result of taking a DNA test. Can Isabel prevent the information obtained from this test from causing real harm to a whole family? If anybody can do that, it is Isabel Dalhousie.

In the latest book in the widely beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe takes on a case for a childhood acquaintance, but her inquiries will require an even more delicate touch than usual. Mma Ramotswe reconnects with an old friend who has been having problems with her daughter. Though Precious feels compelled to lend a hand, she discovers that getting involved in family affairs is always a delicate proposition.

In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce, the intolerably vain and perpetually deluded ex-surveyor, is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat MacGregor, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love.

With his characteristic warmth, inventiveness and brilliant wit, Alexander McCall Smith gives us more of the gloriously entertaining comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street, the Edinburgh townhouse. Six-year-old prodigy Bertie perseveres in his heroic struggle for truth and balanced good sense against his insufferable mother and her crony, the psychotherapist Dr Fairbairn, going as far as to make a short-lived bid for freedom on a trip to Paris with the Edinburgh youth orchestra.

It's the most anticipated event of the decade – Big Lou and Fat Bob's wedding and everyone is invited! After a wonderful day, Big Lou crashes back down to earth and finds that she is a victim of her own success. The lure of those famous bacon rolls is preventing her from leaving hungry customers without their daily dose of deliciousness – even to go for a long-awaited honeymoon. Will Big Lou find the happiness she so richly deserves? Everyone in Scotland Street hopes so, but, as Burns warned, the best laid plans.

The latest book in Alexander McCall Smith's entertaining and hilarious Professor von Igelfeld series Professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is not just any German professor - he is the author of that great work of scholarship, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. His eminence in language studies is widely...

Following on from the brilliant The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe charts the further adventures of Mma Ramotswe, Botswana's only female private detective. It's going to take all her intuition and eminent sensibility for Mma Ramotswe to crack her hardest case yet: the decade-old disappearance of an American on the edge of the Kalahari.

To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose; it is summer in Scotland Street (as it always is) and for the habitués of Edinburgh's favourite street some extraordinary adventures lie in waiting. For the impossibly vain Bruce Anderson - he of the clove-scented hair gel - it may finally be time to settle down, and surely it can only be a question of picking the lucky winner from the hordes of his admirers....

Corduroy Mansions, Pimlico is an oasis of old-fashioned civilisation, its inhabitants considerate and peace-loving. But beneath the polite exterior seismic change is stirring. Barbara Ragg makes an eye-popping discovery about her stolid Scottish suitor’s past, while Oedipus Snark – newly appointed and tirelessly self-interested Government Minister – has a close encounter in Switzerland that leaves him a new man all together.

Beloved and bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith lends his delightful touch to EMMA, the next book in The Austen Project.Prepare to meet a young woman who thinks she knows everything.Fresh from university, Emma Woodhouse triumphantly arrives home in Norfolk ready to embark on adult life with a splash.

The continuing adventures from Isabel Dalhousie, Edinburgh philosopher and curious observer of the behaviour of her fellow man.

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 he couldn't possibly know and a house there where he claims to have spent his former life. When the boy's mother asks Isabel to investigate his claims, she feels she must - of course! - help them learn the truth, and she and her husband, Jamie, set off for the island.

Unusual requests are commonplace at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but so are very ordinary ones, such as a plea for money: when a distant cousin calls on Mma Ramotswe to ask for help with another relative's hip operation, tricky questions arise in regard to family responsibility. Mma Makutsi and Mr J. L. B Matekoni are far from convinced of the merits of the request, but it is hard for Mma Ramotswe, with a heart her size, to turn people away.

Life for Bertie seems to be moving at a pace that is rather out of his control. In Drummond Place gardens, it seems that Olive has their future together all planned out. Meanwhile, upstairs at 44 Scotland Street, Bertie’s father, Stuart, is powerless to stop over-bearing Irene and her motion for Bertie to travel to Aberdeen on a three-month secondment. And, further up in the New Town, while Bruce Anderson plots with old-school chums, love blossoms in Big Lou’s Cafe.

Life - and crime - is not always as it seems for Ulf Varg and the other fearless detectives in Malmo's Department of Sensitive Crimes. There are always surprising new cases to take on, and the latest batch is no exception. And that's not to mention Ulf's struggle to contain his feelings for his colleague Anna Bengsdotter. All in all, things are distinctly difficult in Malmo, and it seems up to Ulf and the Department to set them right.

'It's like ice cream, Mr Flynn,' Bertie continued. 'When you have ice cream, you need to eat it straight away, otherwise it melts. If there are people who haven't got any, you should share it, if you can.' When despair for the world grows, Bertie's theory of ice cream reminds us that it's the simple pleasures in life that we should hold onto.

The winds of change are blowing through Scotland Street. Though Bertie is getting older, he can't resist an adventure to escape his domineering mother, and Bruce, ever the navel-gazer, will have to bring his best self to navigate the complexities of the pas de deux. While Alexander McCall Smith's delightfully warm and witty comedy takes some surprising turns, the improbable adventures of this quirky cast of Scots will affirm the heart and joy in Edinburgh's New Town.

Glasgow for Bertie is the promised land. The city of pies and Irn Bru, far from his controlling mother, Irene, – his place of escape. But how will he respond to the news of the proposed merging of Edinburgh and Glasgow? A new member of Bertie’s class at school is causing ripples in his social circle. She is called Galactica MacFee and is going to be a match for Olive and her lieutenant, Pansy. And an incredible new discovery: a Pictish stone that is said to have the first-know written poem carved into it is the talk of the town.

The latest instalment of the irresistibly charming, perennially best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Precious Ramotswe has always idolised her father, the late Obed Ramotswe. She feels that she knows all about his life - but does she? Sometimes our parents surprise us, and we discover that things were not quite what we thought them to be.