Alexander McCall Smith

Author

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies. Since then he has devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world. These include the 44 Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in the Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series and the Corduroy Mansions novels.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies. Since then he has devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world. These include the 44 Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in the Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series and the Corduroy Mansions novels.

Books

  • Hardback | Pub: 01 Oct 2026
    £18.99

    As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. It’s never too late to make a change. Single and approaching middle age, Maeve Macdonald feels she has reached a point at which, if she doesn’t do something drastic soon, life will have passed her by. And...

  • Hardback | Pub: 06 Aug 2026
    £17.99

    To find out where we are going, we sometimes need to find out where we came from. Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori Montagna, who is suffering from an acute identity crisis, wants to know more about her own past, and after doing a DNA test, she discovers...

  • Paperback | Pub: 04 Jun 2026
    £9.99

    Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books Six friends. One city. The time of their lives. It’s 1988, and on the verge of a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen since graduation, Julie recalls her halcyon student days of 1984 and the...

  • Hardback | Pub: 02 Apr 2026
    £12.99

    A poet’s skill lies in their ability to distil complex themes into a few paragraphs; to pick out the fundamental quality in people that make us unique; they can describe nature in a way that makes us see its majesty. The poet traverses contents...

  • Paperback | Pub: 08 Jan 2026
    £9.99

    What if you met the person you were destined to be with? And what if you never saw them again . . . ? There’s a new case for the Perfect Passion Company. After a serendipitous meeting in a supermarket, Clea meets the man of her dreams. But having...

  • E-Book | Pub: 02 Oct 2025
    £6.99

    Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books Six friends. One city. The time of their lives. It’s 1988, and on the verge of a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen since graduation, Julie recalls her halcyon student days of 1984 and the...

  • Hardback | Pub: 02 Oct 2025
    £17.99

    Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books Six friends. One city. The time of their lives. It’s 1988, and on the verge of a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen since graduation, Julie recalls her halcyon student days of 1984 and the...

  • Hardback | Pub: 07 Aug 2025
    £17.99

    “It’s like ice cream, Mr Flynn,” Bertie continued. “When you have ice cream, you need to eat it straight away, otherwise it melts. If there are people who haven’t got any, you should share it, if you can.” When...

  • Paperback | Pub: 03 Jul 2025
    £8.99

    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...

  • Paperback | Pub: 01 May 2025
    £9.99

    ‘A call to arms for a better society’ – BBC Radio 4 Often a small and seemingly insignificant event can change the course of our lives. Not long after starting a new job, Neil meets Chrissie. Romance soon blossoms and together they...

  • Hardback | Pub: 06 Feb 2025
    £16.99

    What if you met the person you were destined to be with? And what if you never saw them again . . . ? There’s a new case for the Perfect Passion Company. After a serendipitous meeting in a supermarket, Clea meets the man of her dreams. But having...

  • Paperback | Pub: 03 Oct 2024
    £9.99

    Rediscover what it means to fall in love. The Perfect Passion Dating Company at No. 24 Mouse Lane in Edinburgh’s New Town is run by Katie Donald who has an innate instinct for bringing people together. She has developed a skill for finding out...

  • Hardback | Pub: 01 Aug 2024
    £16.99

    ‘A call to arms for a better society’ – BBC Radio 4 Often a small and seemingly insignificant event can change the course of our lives. Not long after starting a new job, Neil meets Chrissie. Romance soon blossoms and together they...

  • Paperback | Pub: 07 Mar 2024
    £12.00

    What really counts in this life? For the writer, Alexander McCall Smith, it is friendship and love – themes that crop up time and again in his novels. And it is these themes that he explores in this collection of poems, with moments that swoop and...

  • Hardback | Pub: 01 Feb 2024
    £18.99

    Rediscover what it means to fall in love. The Perfect Passion Dating Company at No. 24 Mouse Lane in Edinburgh’s New Town is run by Katie Donald who has an innate instinct for bringing people together. She has developed a skill for finding out...

  • Hardback | Pub: 02 Nov 2023
    £17.99

    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...

  • Hardback | Pub: 05 Oct 2023
    £12.99

    With a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith ‘That which is uncooked is destined to be cooked, if has been prepared with cooking in mind’ – The Enigma of Garlic Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street novels are loved and...

  • E-Book | Pub: 07 Sep 2023
    £3.99

    Katie Donald is learning the ropes at the Perfect Passion Company, which provides help to the lovelorn  citizens of Edinburgh. Katie is assisted in her matchmaking endeavors by William Kidd, a talented knitwear designer in the office next door with...

  • Paperback | Pub: 06 Apr 2023
    £8.99

    The characters in this delicious book are pushed to the point of no return and seek retribution. But how we get even is not always the best road to redemption. On the island of Mull, it takes an incomer to make the locals realise that they need to...

  • Paperback | Pub: 02 Feb 2023
    £8.99

    In Pianos and Flowers we are invited 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. Three sisters brought up in Penang,...

  • Hardback | Pub: 03 Nov 2022
    £17.99

    It’s the most anticipated event of the decade: Big Lou and Fat Bob’s wedding and everyone is invited! After a wonderful day, Big Lou crashes back down to earth and finds that she is a victim of her own success. The lure of those famous bacon...

  • Hardback | Pub: 11 Aug 2022
    £10.99

    When he was appointed Edinburgh University’s first professor of medical oncology at the age of 33, John Smyth was already making a name for himself in the world of cancer research. Over the next three decades, he led the development of cancer...

  • Paperback | Pub: 07 Apr 2022
    £8.99

    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...

  • Paperback | Pub: 13 Jan 2022
    £7.99

    ‘Five engrossing, resonant stories here, with no weak links’ ― The Herald The world’s first UNESCO city of literature, Edinburgh is steeped in literary history. It is the birthplace of a beloved cast of fictional characters from...

  • Hardback | Pub: 22 Jul 2021
    £30.00

    The Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of thousands of years of Scottish history and achievement, from the end of the last Ice Age to Dolly the Sheep and Andy Murry’s Wimbledon victory of 2013. More than 1000 stitchers spent...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Paperback | Pub: 04 Oct 2018
    £8.99

    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...

  • Paperback | Pub: 13 Jul 2017
    £6.99

    Set sail with the School Ship Tobermory! 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...