Showing results by narrator "Hilary Neville" in All Categories

The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland's most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian.

In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce, the intolerably vain and perpetually deluded ex-surveyor, is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat MacGregor, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love.

Pretty, impecunious Mary Preston, newly arrived as a guest of her aunt Agnes at the magnificent wooded estate of Rushwater, falls head over heels for handsome playboy David Leslie. Meanwhile Agnes and her mother, the eccentric matriarch Lady Emily, have hopes of a different, more suitable match for Mary. At the lavish Rushwater dance party, her future happiness hangs in the balance....

Charlotte Fairlie is a successful, elegant career woman. Still in her 20s, she has landed a job as headmistress of her old school. She is admired and liked by both staff and pupils - but she begins to feel there is something missing in her well-organised life. Then one summer she goes to stay with a young pupil on the remote Scottish Isle of Targ. In the romantic atmosphere of the Highlands, anything can happen - and even the cool, efficient Charlotte surprises herself.

Recently married to Charles, Sarah is furnishing a cottage in Scotland and starting on a life in sharp contrast to their wartime experiences. Their full entrance into village life is helped by Sarah's delightful grandparents, who have given them the land on which they have built their cottage.

On a beautiful spring day, Julia Harburn sat on a seat in Kensington Gardens enjoying the sunshine. She was wearing a white frock and a large straw hat with a sapphire-blue ribbon which exactly matched her eyes - a strange coincidence, as it turned out, for the blue sapphire was to have a far-reaching influence upon her life. So far, her life had been somewhat dull and circumscribed; but quite suddenly her horizons were enlarged. She began to make new friends.

With his characteristic warmth, inventiveness and brilliant wit, Alexander McCall Smith gives us more of the gloriously entertaining comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street, the Edinburgh townhouse. Six-year-old prodigy Bertie perseveres in his heroic struggle for truth and balanced good sense against his insufferable mother and her crony, the psychotherapist Dr Fairbairn, going as far as to make a short-lived bid for freedom on a trip to Paris with the Edinburgh youth orchestra.

Mrs Tim goes to the Highlands of Scotland and is involved in a plot to rescue a naval officer from the toils of a siren; but, alas, the best laid plans "gang aft agley". The characters are skilfully drawn, from the fierce Mrs London, with her heart of gold, to the garrulous Mrs Falconer, whose muddled stories of her girlhood make excruciatingly funny reading.

Isabel Dalhousie, Edinburgh philosopher and curious observer of the behaviour of her fellow man, is approached by a friend at a local boarding school that is planning to appoint a new headmaster; an anonymous letter has arrived suggesting that one of the shortlisted candidates has a compromising past. But which one is it? Isabel is once again drawn into an investigation, and finds herself exploring dilemmas of human weakness and forgiveness.

Isabel Dalhousie is a new mother and a connoisseur of philosophy; she'd rather not be a sleuth. But when a chance conversation at a dinner party draws Isabel into the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined, she cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Because for Isabel ethics are not theoretical at all, but an everyday matter of life and death.

When Dinah was 19, Gilbert was a sort of fairy prince. She had loved him madly but gradually she had begun to realise that he was not quite so wonderful. Despite keeping her eyes firmly shut, her heart had known there was something wrong. When Gilbert is killed in a flying accident, she is left with four children to raise. Life is hard, fighting back loneliness and eking out a meagre pension. But when her brother, Dan, newly demobbed from the Navy, arrives to whisk them away to the seaside, Dinah can at last find peace.

When one Edinburgh citizen after another is murdered in the same bloody manner, the newspapers buzz with talk of a serial killer. Smart and capable, but battling disillusionment and loneliness, DS Alice Rice races against time and an implacable killer to solve this series of grisly murders among the professional elite in the city's well-to-do New Town.

Isabel's niece Cat is still worshipped by the young musician, Jamie, but Cat has a new and unsuitable love-interest. Meanwhile Isabel's Texan cousins have arrived in Edinburgh and are provoking a quite separate set of dilemmas. In between these events and complications, Edinburgh life continues, calmly sailed through by Isabel, her housekeeper, Grace, and, of course, that cautious resident of Isabel's garden, brother Fox. His alone is the uncomplicated existence.

Oz Blackstone, enormously wealthy screen hero and sleuth, dies of a ruptured aorta. Her mind still filled with thoughts of her dead ex-husband, Primavera Blackstone is in Spain with their son Tom when their peace is breached again with the arrival of her formidable aunt, Adrienne McGowan, whose son, Frank, has disappeared.

Rose McQuinn makes a long anticipated journey to her childhood home on Orkney, but does not find the peace and relaxation she anticipates. An archaeological team stumbles across a body, causing great excitement: could it be the preserved corpse of a 13th-century princess? When the body is identified as the corpse of a local woman, brutally murdered and then thrown into the bog, the calm pleasure of Rose's holiday is shattered.

Two's company, but three's a calamity.... Two's Company is a funny, romantic novel from best-selling Jill Mansell, author of The One You Really Want and Three Amazing Things About You. Jack and Cass Mandeville are a dream couple, ridiculously happy together and successful to boot - Jack as a journalist and Cass with her own hugely popular radio show.

January 1992. A baby girl is left alone for a moment. Long enough for a mother to dash into a shop. Long enough for a child to be taken. Thirteen years later, solicitor Robert Knight's stepdaughter wins a place at a prestigious London school for the gifted. The only puzzle is his wife Erin's reaction. Why is she so reluctant to let Ruby go? Doesn't she want what's best for her? As Erin grows more evasive, Robert can't help but feel she has something to hide and when he stumbles on mysterious letters, he discovers she has been lying to him.

Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher and amateur solver of other people's problems, meets an old foe, Minty Auchterlonie, at a birthday party attended by their young children. Ambitious Minty, now the head of a small investment bank, is in trouble with her shareholders. Isabel becomes involved, and is drawn into a murky world of financial concealment.

When out walking on Arthur's Seat, high above the city of Edinburgh, Rose McQuinn discovers the body of a woman in the ruins of St Anthony's Chapel. But she is astonished that on returning to the scene, there is no evidence of either the victim or the local constable who had taken down Rose's story. Even Rose's would-be lover, Detective Sergeant Jack Macmerry, is doubtful. Edinburgh City Police have no record of a dead woman or of PC Smith.

Primavera is enjoying the quiet life in an idyllic village on the Catalan coast of Spain. The attractive single mother and eight-year-old Tom, son of the late and still lamented Oz Blackstone, are popular figures in the tiny community. But her close friendship with the parish priest has eyebrows rising and tongues wagging. Then a dispute explodes with a powerful councillor who refuses to allow the village wine fair to go ahead. When his body is found, head caved in, some ominous questions are asked.