The Quiet Side of Passion by Alexander McCall Smith

The Quiet Side of Passion: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith --- 287 pages

One of the most delightful things about author Alexander McCall Smith is his ability to write wryly and affectionately about the ethical dilemmas of ordinary daily life. For the most part his characters are so likable that even their foibles disarm us, while the occasional villain suffers a satisfactory comeuppance.

In the 12th book in his Sunday Philosophy Club series, it is glorious summer in Edinburgh and Isabel has more on her plate than she can handle. As her husband Jamie gently reminds her, Isabel's tendency to get involved in other peoples' problems causes complications in her own life.

There's Patricia, the mother of their son Charlie's nursery school friend Basil, quick to take advantage of free babysitting. But is she also scamming the man she alleges is Basil's father for child support?    Isabel's devoted housekeeper is spending most of her time minding Charlie and his younger brother Magnus, and the house desperately needs a top to bottom cleaning. Isabel's niece, Cat, has taken up with a tattoo artist, and has a bad habit of expecting Isabel to drop everything at a moment's notice to help out at Cat's shop. And Isabel has much to do preparing the next issue of the Review of Applied Ethics.

Jamie persuades Isabel that she needs to hire more help for herself: an au pair to help with the boys and the housework, and a part-time assistant to help with the Review. Unfortunately, Antonia, the exuberant Italian au pair, works hard during the day but parties even harder at night. And Claire, the graduate student hired as Isabel's assistant for the Review, brings with her the unwelcome interference of Isabel's old antagonist, Professor Lettuce. Has Isabel's desire for an efficient and orderly home and and career backfired into even more chaos instead?

Click HERE to read the review from the Christian Science Monitor

A Time of Love and Tartan by Alexander McCall Smith

A Time of Love and Tartan: The New 44 Scotland Street Novel by Alexander McCall Smith --- 247 pages

Number 12 in the 44 Scotland Street Series by the inimitable McCall Smith does not disappoint, although the mood in this latest installment becomes rather dour at times, as if even McCall Smith's invincible optimism has met its limits.

His usual cast of characters seem uneasily aware that even Edinburgh is not immune to change; life is uncertain, love can be fleeting, and the brave new world lurks like a wolf waiting to devour the unwitting. McCall Smith looks into that abyss and what we see is not pretty.

Yet in the end kindness and decency reassert themselves. The book ends with the promise of brighter and kinder days ahead even for young Bertie Pollack and his father. Readers will rejoice.

Click HERE for a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE for a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE for a review from Birlinn (UK).

Click HERE for a review from the Washington Times.

Miss Julia Weathers the Storm by Ann B. Ross

Miss Julia Weathers the Storm by Ann B. Ross --- 277 pages

Miss Julia has been known to roll her eyes when her good-natured husband Sam gets one of his bright ideas. This time Sam is bound and determined to rent a big beachfront house on the Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the coast of Charleston SC, and invite all of their family and close friends to join them for two weeks of sun and sand. However, she is reluctantly persuaded to go along, especially since her close friend LuAnne Conover needs a refuge while she considers whether to divorce her husband, who, she has just discovered, has been involved in a relationship with another woman for years.

Miss Julia’s longtime housekeeper, Lillian, also needs a respite from taking care of her loquacious great granddaughter Latisha, while Lillian has surgery to remove a bunion from her foot. So Latisha goes to the beach along with the rest of the crowd: Lloyd Springer, Miss Julia’s late, unlamented first husband’s natural son; Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens and their family; Binkie and Coleman Bates and their daughter; Etta Mae Wiggins, who manages one of Miss Julia’s properties; and LuAnn.

After a few days of fun the weather takes a turn for the worse as a hurricane begins to wend its way up the coastline. Clouds roll in and the waves get higher and stronger. That’s when hundred dollar bills begin the wash ashore from a suspicious boat. Latisha’s been out every day picking up sea shells but none of the cash. Three strangers appear on the beach, asking questions about the money, and showing an unusual interest in Latisha’s shells. When the island is evacuated because of the hurricane, Miss Julia and her guests have to pack up and leave in a hurry, but are then caught in a traffic jam as thousands of tourists and locals flee inland.

Finally they make it home to Abbotsville, but Miss Julia is worried that someone has followed them from the beach in a big, black SUV with tinted windows --- someone who seems to be tracking Latisha. This 18^th book in the long running cozy mystery series may be wearing a little thin around the edges, but the center still holds.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the Wilmington NC Star News.

The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith

The Revolving Door of Life: The New 44 Scotland Street Novel by Alexander McCall Smith --- 282 pages

The tenth installment in McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street Series is charming, droll, and poignant all at once, maintaining the high standard of story-telling and gentle satire we've come to expect from McCall Smith.

In this episode, the much put-upon Bertie Pollack, his hapless father Stuart and his small brother Ulysses have temporarily escaped from the tyranny of Irene (one of the most fearsome mothers in fiction).  Irene is causing havoc in a Bedouin harem (see Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers), and Stuart has asked his mother to help out with the boys.  Nicola, arriving from Portugal, transforms Bertie's life and his fervent wish is for his grandmother to "please stay forever."

Meanwhile Matthew and Elspeth and their triplets have moved to a big house in the country, formerly owned by the doubtfully titled Duke of Johannesburg. When Matthew discovers a secret room and long forgotten treasure, he faces an ethical dilemma: who is the owner and beneficiary of this treasure?  Meanwhile, Matthew's assistant at the art gallery, Pat, is facing a dilemma of her own.  She is convinced her widower and well-to-do father is being taken in by a con artist who is after his money. She reluctantly enlists the help of her former boy friend, the narcissistic Bruce, to expose the schemer.  But Bruce seems to have met his match --- a woman even more ruthlessly opportunistic than he is! And there are dark schemes going on within the Association of Scottish Nudists' headquarters in nearby Moray Place.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read a review from the Cultural Voyager.

Golden Age by Jane Smiley

Golden Age: A Novel (Last Hundred Years Book 3) by Jane Smiley --- 443 pages

The final volume in Smiley's Last Hundred Years trilogy (following Some Luck and Early Warning  provides both a satisfying and an unsettling conclusion to the story of the Langdon family.

Golden Age covers the years 1987 to 2019. It starts with the family gathering at the farm in Iowa to welcome in a longlost son. It ends with the quiet passing of the family's mercurial matriarch.

Along the way we see not just the story of one family straying through the years, but the story of a country cast adrift from its understanding of itself. The story ends ambiguously: can the Langdons, can the nation, set a new course before the tide turns irreversibly?

A wonderful achievement by a masterful story teller, mixing the small happenings of ordinary lives with the larger forces of global change.  This is an American saga.

Click HERE to read an interview with Jane Smiley from the Chicago Tribune.

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from the San Francisco SFGate.

 Click HERE to read the review from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

Early Warning: A Novel by Jane Smiley --- 476 pages

Early Warning is the second volume in Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy. The story follows the Langdon family of Iowa through the decades of 20th century America. Book I, Some Luck, began after the First World War when returning veteran Walter Langdon married Rosanna Vogel, the daughter of the neighboring farm family. It ended in 1953 with Walter's death. Early Warning opens with the family gathering for Walter's funeral. Walter and Rosanna’s children are now scattered across the country, with children of their own. In the course of Book II we witness their marriages and their children growing up amid the social traumas, political upheaveals and economic swings of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. The story line encompasses both public events and private lives, but what ties all together are the family relationships that endure through good times and bad.

A wonderfully compelling, compassionate but never sentimental, look at the American experience through the lives of one extended family.  The final volume is due out in October. Smiley is a master story teller at the peak of her powers.  

Click HERE to read a review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read a review from the San Francisco Gate.

Click HERE to listen to an interview of Jane Smiley talking about her book on NPR's Diane Rehm Show.

Miss Julia Lays Down the Law by Ann B. Ross

Miss Julia Lays Down the Law by Ann B.Ross --- 307 pages

The 15th book in the popular Southern cozy series set in the picturesque but fictional town of Abbortville, North Carolina. Connie Clayborn, a know-it-all newcomer, has all the local ladies, including Miss Julia, in an uproar over her proposals to redevelop Abbotsville and make it a tourist destination. But before Connie can harangue the ladies into action, she is found dead in her own kitchen by none other than Miss Julia herself, who had gone to see Connie at the behest of Pastor Ledbetter, whose wife, Emma Sue, has been overset by Connie's strictures.

Much to her dismay, Miss Julia finds herself heading the list of suspects, and is hampered in clearing her name by a promise of confidentiality she rashly gave to Pastor Ledbetter, who has now taken to avoiding her. 

With her husband Sam called out of town, and her lawyer, Binkie, preoccupied --- Binkie's husband Coleman is proposing to raise funds for a local charity by spending several days camped outdoors on top of a billboard by the highway --- Miss Julia is left to cope on her own.  She decides to conduct her own investigation with the assistance of an amiable vagrant. Unfortunately her efforts only land her in deeper trouble, from which she manages to extricate herself only after much hilarity.

Click HERE to read a review from the Asheville, North Carolina paper.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus.

Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers by Alexander McCall Smith

Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers: The New 44 Scotland Street Novel by Alexander McCall Smith --- 295 pages

The ninth book in this charming series about the inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh and their various assorted friends and families.  The thread that draws these vignettes together is the much anticipated seventh birthday of Bertie Pollack, but interspersed with the indignities visited upon the long-suffering Bertie by his domineering mother Irene, we find new installments in the continuing stories of newlyweds Angus and Domenica coping with a difficult house guest; Matthew and Elspeth house hunting with triplets, Danish au pairs, and the Duke of Johannesburg in tow; Pat McGregor's disconcerting discovery of her father's secret love life; and a new development in Big Lou's quest for purpose and happiness.

A gently comic slice of life, this is a series that leaves the reader refreshed and hopeful that, despite our faults and foibles, there is still hope for humanity.

Click HERE to read a review from the UK Sunday Express.

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Some Luck: A Novel by Jane Smiley --- 395 pages

I had the great good fortune to hear Jane Smiley speak a few years ago, and since she grew up in St. Louis, I've always followed her career and read her books.

With this book I think she has now firmly established herself in the pantheon of Great American Authors. Not only is it a subtly crafted work of literature but it also has great popular appeal, for it is irresistibly readable. The lives of the Langdons, an Iowa farm family, provide a personal narrative of the American experience in the 20th century. Some Luck begins in the aftermath of World War I, and proceeds through the Great Depression, World War II, the Atomic Age and the beginning of the Cold War, ending in 1953.

Best of all, this is the first of a projected trilogy, The Last Hundred Years, that will follow the family from 1919 to 2019, 100 chapters, one for each of the 100 years, across three volumes. The second is scheduled for publication next spring and the third in the fall of 2015. This first book came out the beginning of October and has already been listed for the National Book Award.

Click HERE to read the Chicago Tribune review of Some Luck.

Click HERE to read an interview with Jane Smiley in the New York Times.

Click HERE to listen to an interview with Jane Smiley on Iowa Public Radio.

Click HERE to watch Smiley give a  reading from Some Luck followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day by Ann B. Ross

Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day by Ann B. Ross --- 308 pages

Ann B. Ross, author of the best-selling Miss Julia series, here takes a slight detour off the main route of her series to give some credit where it's due to Etta Mae Wiggins, the manager of Miss Julia's trailer park property over in Denton, who has loyally followed when Miss Julia has called for back-up and assistance in her various adventures over the past fifteen books in the series.

Here we get the scoop on Etta Mae's story and her struggles to improve her lot in life. For although born to a hardscrabble existence, Etta Mae has worked hard to rise in the world. And in spite of too many people who continue to look down their noses at her and assume the worst, Etta Mae continues to follow the promptings of her kind heart and hope for the best.

It's a wild ride back to the early days of Etta Mae's acquaintance with Miss Julia and a tale of a surprisingly tender May-December romance. The humor is as juicy as southern fried chicken, so sit back and enjoy!

The next Miss Julia adventure, Miss Julia Lays Down the Law, is scheduled for release in April 2015.

Click HERE to find out more about Ann Ross and Miss Julia.

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann B. Ross

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann. B. Ross --- 297 pages

It's summertime in Abbotsville, and Miss Julia is ready to sit back and enjoy her newly renovated house and the happiness of her nearest and dearest. But fate just doesn't seem prepared to allow Miss Julia to relax.

First her husband Sam decides to run for political office, and then her overbearing cousin Elsie sends her granddaughter Trixie to stay with Miss Julia without a by-your-leave. Trixie arrives with orders from her Meemaw to pull herself together and find a husband. Miss Julia is both fascinated and appalled. Much to her surprise, Trixie manages to attract the attentions of Rodney Pace, a man who has chosen the mortuary business as a career because it's recession-proof. But Miss Julia questions whether Rodney is really more interested in Trixie as a future wife or in a piece of property Miss Julia owns as a future mortuary site. What with one thing and the next, it turns out to be a very busy summer for Miss Julia!