Iain McIntosh

"When two siblings attend an unusual school, aboard a ship, they make new friends, learn about all things nautical, and become involved in a mystery they feel compelled to help solve"--

When twelve-year-old twins Ben and Fee MacTavish, along with their schoolmates, head to a small island in the Caribbean aboard the School Ship Tobermory, they learn extraordinary details about their captain's past and come face to face with modern-day pirates.

Residents of an Edinburgh apartment building are put merrily under the microscope in this latest offering from Scotsman McCall Smith. Likable 20-year-old Pat--now on her second ?gap? year--rents a room from Bruce, a handsome surveyor who is insufferably self-absorbed. He?s hardly boyfriend material, she tells herself, nor is Matthew, the aesthetically impaired owner of the gallery where she?s employed. Pat?s mundane life becomes infinitely more interesting...

Von Igelfeld is quite pleased with his role as a visiting scholar at Cambridge, even if his English colleagues can be difficult to comprehend. They frequently speak in metaphors and make peculiar assumptions, saying such odd things as "I take it your journey went well, " when that is not the case at all. But von Igelfeld settles in the best he can, and is soon deeply embroiled in some shady political scheming at the university. After returning to...

"Precious Ramotswe has two new friends at school and they have the funniest and most resourceful pet you can imagine. But they are upset that their family's most valuable possession, their cow, has gone missing. Precious has a plan to find the missing animal but she needs the help of another in her search. Will she succeed and what obstacles will she face on her path?"-- http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk

Newlywed painter and sometime somnambulist Angus Lordie might be sleepwalking his way into trouble with Animal Welfare when he lets his dog Cyril drink a bit too much lager at the local bar. The longsuffering Bertie, on the cusp of his seventh birthday party, has taken to dreaming about his eighteenth, a time when he will be able to avoid the indignity of unwanted girl attendees and the looming threat of a gender-neutral doll from his domineering...

Staying with Aunty Bee at a safari camp in the Botswana countryside where a film crew's making a movie about a lion, nine-year-old Precious Ramotswe and her resourceful new friend Khumo use their detective skills to find the movie star lion when he goes missing.

"Bertie's mother Irene returns from the Middle East to discover that, in her absence, her son has been exposed to the worst of evils--television shows, ice cream parlors, and even unsanctioned art at the National Portrait Gallery. Her wrath descends on Bertie's long-suffering father, Stuart. But Stuart has found a reason to spend more time outside of the house and seems to have a new spring in his step. What does this mean for the residents of 44...

In these poems, Alexander McCall Smith writes about his travels, from Africa to Greece, London to Dubai, and back home to Scotland. He shares his gentle, inimitably McCall Smith-esque observations on life, love, and beauty, reminding us how deeply satisfying it can be to take in the world around us with all our senses, and with all our mind and heart.

Von Igelfeld is the world's leading scholar on Portuguese irregular verbs, having written a majestic, nearly 1,200-page book on the subject. As one review says, "There is nothing more to be said on this subject. Nothing." But in other matters, von Igelfeld is not nearly so skilled. Whether haplessly playing tennis against an equally dreadful opponent, or committing his friends to swordfighting duels without their knowledge, von Igelfeld is somewhat...