Pat rents a room from the handsome and cocky Bruce, at 44 Scotland Street, and discovers that she has also acquired some colorful new neighbors, including Domenica, an eccentric widow.

"From one of our most beloved and best-selling authors: a hilarious new stand-alone novel about one man's misadventures in travel and romance in the Italian countryside. When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already overdue cookbook, he expects it to be the perfect escape from stressful city life. But when he arrives, things quickly take a turn for the worse. His hired car is nowhere to be found, and...

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...

"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...

The irresistible wit of New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith has won over countless fans. His subtle humor and enchanting characterizations are fully on display in At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. Professor Dr. von Igelfeld is pleased with his role as a visiting scholar at Cambridge, even if his English colleagues are difficult to comprehend. They frequently speak in metaphors and make peculiar assumptions, saying such odd...

In this delightful second installment in Alexander McCall Smith's bestselling detective series, the irrepressibly curious Isabel Dalhousie gets caught up in a highly unusual affair of the heart. When Isabel is asked to cover for vacationing Cat at her delicatessen, Isabel meets a man with a most interesting problem. He recently had a heart transplant and is suddenly haunted by memories of events that never happened to him.The situation piques her...

Pictures capture moments in time, presenting the viewer with a window into another life. But a picture can go only so far. Who are the people in the image? What are their fears? What are their dreams? In the fourteen delightful tales in this collection, Alexander McCall Smith imagines the lives and loves of some of the everyday people pictured in these twentieth-century photographs. A young woman finds unexpected love while perusing Egyptian antiquities....