The Charming Quirks of Others
An Isabel Dalhousie Novel
By Alexander Mccall Smith
(Pantheon, Hardcover, 9780307379177, 272pp.)
Publication Date: October 12, 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback, Paperback
Categories: Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths
 |     |
In this latest and most felicitous addition to the Isabel Dalhousie series, our inquisitive heroine comes to see that there are very few of us who are not flawed . . . herself included.
Isabel has been asked for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster at a local boys’ school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers about herself and about Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing.
Isabel’s investigation will have her exploring issues of ambition, as well as of charity, forgiveness, and humility, as she moves nearer and nearer to some of the most hidden precincts of the heart.
Here is Isabel Dalhousie at her beguiling best: intelligent, insightful, and with a unique understanding of the quirks of human nature.
ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics.
Praise for the Isabel Dalhousie series
“Charmingly told. . . . Its graceful prose shines, and Isabel’s interior monologues—meditations on a variety of moral questions—are bemused, intelligent and entertaining.” —The Seattle Times
“Endearing. . . . Offers tantalizing glimpses of Edinburgh’s complex character and a nice, long look into the beautiful mind of a thinking woman.” —The New York Times Book Review
“In Mma Ramotswe, [McCall Smith] minted one of the most memorable heroines in any modern fiction. Now, with the creation of Isabel Dalhousie, he’s done it again. . . . She’s such good company, it’s hard to believe she’s fictional. You finish [one] installment greedily looking forward to more.” —Newsweek
 |
1Q84 Haruki Murakami Knopf |
 |
The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
 |
The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes Knopf |
 |
Death Comes to Pemberley PD James Knopf |
