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.

Grace Makutsi’s husband, Phuti, is in a bind. An international firm is attempting to undercut his prices in the office furniture market. Phuti has always been concerned with quality and comfort, but this new firm seems interested only in profits. To make matters worse, they have a slick new advertising campaign that seems hard to beat. Nonetheless with Mma Ramotswe’s help, Phuti comes up with a campaign that may just do the trick.

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.

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....

Even down to its well-set Georgian townhouses, Edinburgh is a hymn to measure and harmony. But on Scotland Street, domestic accord is in short supply. Matthew and Elspeth welcome three new arrivals, though the joys of multiple parenthood are somewhat lost due to sleep deprivation and the difficulties of telling their brood apart. Angus and Domenica are to marry, and Domenica has ambitious and disturbing plans for their living arrangements, especially when it appears that Antonia, in Italy recuperating from Stendhal Syndrome, may not return.

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.

INTRODUCED BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN Mildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death...

In the follow-up to My Italian Bulldozer, hapless food writer Paul Stewart once again finds himself trapped in a series of hilarious misunderstandings, this time facing off against the second worst restaurant in France. Paul Stewart has returned to Scotland to continue his successful career. His agent and girlfriend, Gloria, has arranged for him to write The Philosophy of Food in Six Easy Chapters, a project he relishes but that will have to be delivered in six months.

When their circus moves into a new town they soon make friends with a young boy named Tom. But Tom can't enjoy the circus because his granny has disappeared, and he's worried he'll never see her again. With the help of their astonishing circus skills can the Shortbread circus stars crack the clues and find Tom's granny?  

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.

Mma Ramotswe knows she is very lucky indeed. She has a loving family, good friends and a thriving business doing what she enjoys most - helping people. But the latest mystery she is called upon to solve is distinctly trickier than it initially appears, and, of course, there's plenty to handle in her personal life between Charlie and his new bride and Mma Makutsi and her talking shoes. In the end, Mma Ramotswe's patience and common sense will win out, and, without a doubt, all will be the better for it.

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.

When facing a moral dilemma, Isabel Dalhousie--Edinburgh philosopher, amateur detective, and title character of a series of novels by best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith - often refers to the great twentieth-century poet W. H. Auden. This is no accident: McCall Smith has long been fascinated by Auden. Indeed, the novelist, best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, calls the poet not only the greatest literary discovery of his life but also the best of guides on how to live.

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.

As the countdown to Mma Makutsi’s wedding begins, all is not as it should be at the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. While investigating unpleasant occurrences on a southern cattle-post, Mma Ramotswe, always on the side of the weak against the strong, has reason to reflect on Rule No.3 of The Principles of Private Detection: never lie to the client. Apprentice mechanic Charlie seems to be avoiding certain important responsibilities.

A detective in the wild. Precious Ramotswe gets a very special treat. She gets a trip to visit her Aunty Bee at a safari camp. On her first day in camp, a new lion arrives. But this is no average lion: Teddy is an actor-lion who came with a film crew. When Teddy escapes, Precious and her...

In the sequel to Portuguese Irregular Verbs, our hero, Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, is the unlikely choice to address veterinarians in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas; is dogged by dachshunds; becomes embroiled with that notorious Coptic schismatic, the Duke of Johannesburg (and his victim the Patriarch of Alexandria); and finally ends up being mobbed as the star attraction on a Mediterranean cruise ship.

The latest instalment of the beloved and best-selling series - as endearing and delectable as ever! Business is slow at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, so at Mma Makutsi’s suggestion, Mma Ramotswe is persuaded to take her first-ever holiday. But just as she’s about to depart, a new client arrives: a young woman whose father was considered a hero in Botswana but whose reputation is now being called into question.

If only Pat Macgregor had an inkling of the embarrassment - romantic, professional, even aesthetic - that flowed from accepting narcissistic ex-boyfriend Bruce Anderson's invitation for coffee, she would never have said yes. And if only Matthew, her boss at the art gallery, hadn't wandered into his local bookshop and picked up a particular book at a particular time, he would never have knocked over his former English teacher or attracted the attentions of the police.

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.