This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to ₃help people with problems in their lives.₄?Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that...

"Precious Ramotswe founder and owner of Botswana's only detective agency for the 'concerns of both ladies and others,' investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important 'Government Man,' and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Meanwhile, the agency is having money problems, and when unexpected difficulties...

Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher by training, and an amateur sleuth by choice. When a young man falls from a balcony to his death, Isabel does not believe it was an accident. Plunging deep into the shady business community of Edinburgh, she is determined to root out the truth.

Before becoming the first female private investigator in Botswana, eight-year-old Precious Ramotswe tracks down a thief who has been stealing her classmates' snacks.

Precious Ramotswe dips her toe into the world of politics in the newest addition to the beloved and best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. When Mma Potokwane suggests to Mma Ramotswe that she run for a seat on the City Council, Mma Ramotswe is at first unsure. But when she learns about the proposed construction of the flashy Big Fun Hotel next to a graveyard, she allows herself to be persuaded. Her opponent is none other than Violet Sephotho,...

"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 proposion. Mr. J.L.B....

When Isabel's niece, Cat, asks Isabel to run her delicatessen while she attends a wedding in Italy, Isabel meets a man with a most interesting problem. He recently had a heart transplant and is suddenly plagued with memories of events that never happened to him. The situation appeals to Isabel as a philosophical question: Is the heart truly the seat of the soul? And it piques her insatiable curiosity: Could the memories be connected with the donor's...

-- The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Precious Ramotswe learns valuable lessons about first impressions and forgiveness in this latest installment of the beloved and best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.   Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are approached by their part-time colleague, Mr. Polopetsi, with a troubling story: a woman, accused of being rude to a valued customer, has been wrongly dismissed from her job at an office furniture store. Never one to let an act of injustice...

An all-new, never-before-published original short novel by the bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Shortlisted for the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction Cornelius P. “Fatty” O'Leary and his wife, Betty, plan a vacation in Ireland for his fortieth birthday, where they will tour his ancestral homeland and relax in the countryside. Almost immediately, things go terribly wrong: the seats in economy class...