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

Christmas is the perfect time to curl up with a good story, and this cracking collection brings you 30 wonderfully diverse tales inspired by this most special of seasons. From Santa Claus, gift-giving and family gatherings, to an unexpected encounter in a snowstorm and an alternative take on the Nativity, they're sure to get you in the festive mood.

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.

Detective Ulf Varg from the Department of Sensitive Crimes is often called upon to investigate unusual matters. But rarely is he asked to conduct an inquiry on behalf of his own family. Is such a thing ethical? Adding to Ulf's moral discomfort is the fact that he does not exactly see eye to eye with his younger brother Bjorn - a leading player in one of Sweden's right-wing parties, the Moderate Extremists. Still, family is family, so Ulf finds himself working to uncover the mole leaking secrets to a rival party, the Extreme Moderates.

The complete BBC radio adaptations of Alexander McCall's bestselling series. Inspired by Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, 44 Scotland Street started life as a serial in The Scotsman. It was a huge hit, and was soon novelised, adapted on stage and dramatised for BBC Radio 4. Collected here are all five radio series, in which we follow the interconnected lives of the residents of adjoining flats in a tenement in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town.

It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family - Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father, Henry - owner of Pitlochry, a tea plantation - and her mother, Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, set in the idyllic grounds carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious of her governess Miss White's intentions.

Follow the exploits of the children who go to a most unusual school - the sail-powered training ship Tobermory. When a film crew arrives in Tobermory Bay, Ben and Fee are invited to be extras. But their suspicions are soon aroused - is the film crew genuine, or are they up to something sinister? Ben and Fee soon discover the truth when they uncover a dastardly plan masterminded by a South American businessman.

Isabel Dalhousie thinks often of friends, sometimes of lovers, and on occasion of chocolate. As an Edinburgh philosopher, she is certain of where she stands. She can review a book called In Praise of Sin with panache and conviction, but real life is...well, perhaps a bit more challenging....

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.

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.

If he's in the right mood, divine Angus might grant you sight of your true love in a dream. You might even fall in love with him, but he'll never love you back. He's too busy making mischief, stealing the palace of the gods from his father, turning his enemies into pigs, and so forth - until he is trapped by his own romantic games, falls for an unattainable woman and is doomed to seek her forever. In 20th-century Scotland, Angus's troubled alter ego searches for his true family and identity.

After successfully thwarting a dastardly plan to steal rare marine animals, Ben and Fee MacTavish feel they can relax and continue learning all about nautical life onboard School Ship Tobermory. But it's not long before their everyday routine is interrupted by an extraordinary event. The crew find themselves embroiled in another adventure that leads them to a small island in the Caribbean, where they learn about Captain Macbeth's past and come face to face with modern-day pirates.

Long-suffering child genius Bertie Pollock has much to contend with in the latest instalment of life at 44 Scotland Street, not least the birth of his brother Ulysses. Bertie had hoped that caring for a new baby would command all of his mother's attention, but he quickly sees that his dream of being left to his own devices is not destined to come true.

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.

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.

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.

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are called to a safari lodge in Botswana’s Okavango Delta to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest. The Okavango makes Precious appreciate once again the beauty of her homeland: it is a paradise of teeming wildlife, majestic grasslands and sparkling water. However, it is also home to rival safari operators, fearsome crocodiles and disgruntled hippopotamuses.

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.

From the creator of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency comes a medley of perverse couplings, casual dates and romantic encounters: hilarious tales that will sadden, inspire, and surprise. McCall Smith, a master of the unexpected and a seamless storyteller, revels in offering us the quirky complications inherent in the entanglements that human beings engineer for themselves - entanglements that can be shocking, unedifying, complex, and sometimes completely disastrous.

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.

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.