The first tale in Alexander McCall Smith's cozy mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by London's Times Literary Supplement. The agency at first consists of one woman: the charismatic Mma Precious Ramotswe ("the Miss Marple of Botswana"—NYTBR), who specializes in rooting out missing husbands and wayward daughters, con men and imposters. "The author's prose has the merits of simplicity, euphony and precision. His descriptions leave one as if standing in the Botswana landscape. This is art that conceals art. I haven't read anything with such unalloyed pleasure for a long time."—Sunday Telegraph (London)

After discovering an intruder in her house on Zebra Drive—and perhaps even more baffling, a pumpkin on her porch—the newly married Precious Ramotswe is busier than usual in this sixth book in the series, following The Full Cupboard of Life. Her associate, Mma Makutsi, also has a full plate: she's taken up dance lessons, only to be partnered with a man with two left feet. And at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, where Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is already overburdened with work, one of his apprentices has run off with a wealthy older woman.