May We Suggest...Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith has written more than 60 books. He is best known for his internationally acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which rapidly rose to the top of the bestseller lists throughout the world. The series has now been translated into 45 languages and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. McCall Smith's serial novel, 44 Scotland Street, was published in book form to great acclaim in 2005, followed by Espresso Tales and Love Over Scotland, and then by The World According to Bertie (Fall 2008) and also The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (Fall 2009). In late 2008, the serial novel, Corduroy Mansions, depicting the lives of the inhabitants of a large Pimlico house, began to be published with its hardcover release in 2009. Alexander McCall Smith published a solo novel, La's Orchestra Saves the World, in December 2009.

In addition, McCall Smith's delightful German professor series, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances were published in the US in January 2005. He is also the author of several children's books.  Pantheon has published Alexander McCall Smith's collection of African folktales, The Girl Who Married a Lion. McCall Smith is also the author of Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams, a contemporary reworking of a beloved Celtic myth and Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations, a collection of short stories examining the mysteries of dating and courtship.

McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe.  He was educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor in Scotland.  It 

was in this role that he first returned to Africa to work in Botswana, where he helped to set up a new law school at the University of Botswana. For many years he was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, and has been a visiting professor at a number of other universities elsewhere, including ones in Italy and the United States. He is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh.

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library Award, the United Kingdom's Author of The Year Award in 2004 and Sweden's Martin Beck Award. In 2007 he was made a CBE for his services to literature in the Queen's New Year's Honor List. He holds honorary doctorates from 10 universities, most recently from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.






READ-A-LIKES


Rita Mae Brown offers commentary on human nature that is perceptive without being ponderous. Though her works are sometimes spicier, her quirky, gently humorous characters will remind readers of McCall Smith’s books. She captures the cadences and rhythms of close-knit communities in the stand-alone novel Southern Discomfort, featuring a small community, richly drawn characters, and vivid personal politics

Clyde Edgerton is a master at creating the sort of close-knit communities that characterize McCall Smith's novels. Normal (if quirky) people with normal problems form the heart of Edgerton's books, which study human nature with humor and compassion. Edgerton, like McCall Smith, writes books that are gentle but not spineless, warm but not bland.. Edgerton shares McCall Smith's ear for dialect, though his books are set in the American South, rather than Europe or Africa. Try starting with Lunch at the Piccadilly.