Adult

In this ninth installment of Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series, the Edinburgh philosopher and amateur sleuth answers an unexpected appeal from a wealthy Scottish collector who has been robbed of a valuable painting. She soon discovers that the thieves may be closer to the owner than he ever would have expected. Against the backdrop of this intriguing case, Isabel copes with life’s issues, large and small.

Alice Munro’s peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but always spacious and timeless stories is once again apparent everywhere in her new collection. In story after story, she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking.

Set in 1972 during the Cold War, England's legendary intelligence agency MI5 embarks on an operation code-named "Sweet Tooth" to fund writers whose politics align with those of the government. Cambridge student Serena Frome is hired to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. But when she begins to fall in love with him, she wonders how long she can conceal her undercover life.