Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s best-loved and most prolific authors, applauded across the globe as the author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and 44 Scotland Street amongst more than 100 other books. He lives in Edinburgh and many of his books are published on our Polygon imprint. He is hugely supportive of publishing in Scotland.

Reading a novel by Alexander McCall Smith feels as if a soothing balm is being applied to all the hurts and injuries inflicted by the world around us

– SMSA, Sydney

Writer Alexander McCall Smith Portraits 19/02/19 @ Kirsty Anderson

COMING SOON

  • The Second Worst Restaurant in France
    Paperback | Pub: 11 Jun 2020
    £8.99

    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…

  • Tiny Tales
    Hardback | Pub: 13 Aug 2020
    £9.99

    Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences – or even a page or two – we may see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than occurs in many much longer narratives. In Tiny Tales Alexander McCall Smith…

Stand Alone Fiction

  • The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse
    Hardback | Pub: 02 Nov 2017
    £14.99

    Val was working as a land girl when the Americans arrived at the nearby airfield in 1944. Mike, a young American airman, came into her life soon after, and so too did Peter Woodhouse, a dog badly treated on a neighbouring farm and taken in by her…

  • Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party
    Paperback | Pub: 08 Mar 2018
    £7.99

    It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius ‘Fatty O’Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under. The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he…

  • Trains and Lovers
    Paperback | Pub: 10 Aug 2017
    £7.99

    Imagine you’re on a train. Think about all the other people on the train with you, what their lives are or have been, and the different experiences you’ve all had. But there is one more thing that you undoubtedly all share: you have all…

SHORT STORIES and POETRY

  • Chance Developments
    Paperback | Pub: 11 May 2017
    £7.99

    In this beguiling book, Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them. Who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling,…

  • Pianos and Flowers
    Hardback | Pub: 07 Nov 2019
    £12.99

    In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer….

  • A Gathering
    Paperback | Pub: 23 Apr 2020
    £9.99

    A poem does not have to be famous to be cherished. The best-known poems of Robert Burns have been loved by countless people over the years, but there are other poems that may be largely unknown that will mean a great deal to the few who are familiar…

Scotland Street

  • A Time of Love and Tartan
    Hardback | Pub: 27 Jul 2017
    £16.99

    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…

  • The Bertie Project
    Hardback | Pub: 16 Aug 2016
    £16.99

    Once more, we catch up with the delightful goings-on in the fictitious 44 Scotland Street from Alexander McCall Smith. With customary charm and deftness, Alexander McCall Smith gives us another installment in this popular series, now running in its…

CHILDREN’S FICTION