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The Miracle At Speedy Motors
''The Miracle at Speedy Motors'', published in 2008, is the ninth in ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe Precious may refer to: Music * Precious (group), a British female pop group Albums * ''Precious'' (Chanté Moore album), 1992 * ''Precious'' (Cubic U album), 1998 * ''Precious'' (Ours album), 2002 * ''Precious'' (Precious album), 2000 * .... Plot summary It has never occurred to Precious Ramotswe that there might be disadvantages to being the best-known lady detective in Botswana. But when she receives a threatening anonymous letter, she is compelled to reconsider her previously unconquerable belief in a kind world and good neighbours. While she ponders the identity of the letter-writer, Mma Ramotswe has a further set of problems to solve, both professional and personal. There is an adopted child's poignant search for her true family ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law and bioethics and served on related British and international committees. He has since become known as a fiction writer, with sales in English exceeding 40 million by 2010 and translations into 46 languages. He is known as the creator of ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' series. The "McCall" derives from his great-great-grandmother Bethea McCall, who married James Smith at Glencairn, Dumfries-shire, in 1833. Early life Alexander McCall Smith was born in 1948 in Bulawayo in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), to British parents. He was the only son, having three elder sisters. His father worked as a public prosecutor in Bulawayo. McCall Smith's paternal grandfather was the medical doctor and New Zealand commu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The No
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun '' thee'') when followed by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detective Novel
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades. History Ancient Some scholars, such as R. H. Pfeiffer, have suggested that certain ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (the Protestant Bible locates this story within the apocrypha), the account told by two witnesses broke down when Daniel cross-examines ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Novel
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective (such as Sherlock Holmes), who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism. Mystery fiction can involve a supernatural mystery in which the solution does not have to be logical and even in which there is no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, whose titles such as ''Dime Myster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little, Brown
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown (publisher), James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily Dickinson's poetry and ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations''. Since 2006 Little, Brown and Company is a division of the Hachette Book Group. 19th century Little, Brown and Company had its roots in the book selling trade. It was founded in 1837 in Boston by Charles Little and James Brown. They formed the partnership "for the purpose of Publishing, Importing, and Selling Books". It can trace its roots before that to 1784 to a bookshop owned by Ebenezer Battelle on Marlborough Street. They published works of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and they were specialized in legal publishing and importing titles. For many years, it was the most extensive law publisher in the United States, and also the largest importer o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardcover
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a "jacketless" alternative has increased in popularity: these "paper-over-board" or "jacketless" hardcover bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. Paperback can be the preferred medium when a book is not expect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Good Husband Of Zebra Drive
''The Good Husband of Zebra Drive'' is the eighth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe. Grace Makutsi is promoted to associate detective and handles a case herself. Mma Ramotswe helps the hospital in Mochudi deal with a string of mysterious patient deaths. Her husband wants to try his hand at detection, and with his usual style, he does. Charlie, the apprentice, decides to quit and run a taxi service. This novel was well received by several reviewers. One felt this novel to be a bit repetious. Others found the "outpouring of mercy" to shed a new light on the characters, "tidbits of quiet wisdom sprinkled throughout" the novel are a major part of the novel's appeal, and that this novel, like the earlier ones, "resonate with poignancy, wisdom, and wit". The novel entered the US best-seller list, from ''Publishers Weekly''. Plot summary Mma Ramotswe meet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tea Time For The Traditionally Built even when she is bouncing up and down on the best bed in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.
In her attempt to foster understanding between the sexes and find the traitor on M ...
''Tea Time for the Traditionally Built'', published in 2009, is the tenth in ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe. Plot summary Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree that there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. The glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's unsuspecting fiancé and it becomes clear that some men do not know how to recognise a ruthless Jezebel Jezebel (;"Jezebel" (US) and ) was the daughte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaborone
Gaborone ( , , ) is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 246,325 based on the 2022 census, about 10% of the total population of Botswana. Its agglomeration is home to 421,907 inhabitants at the 2011 census. Gaborone is situated between Kgale Hill and Oodi Hill, near the confluence of the Notwane River and Segoditshane River in the south-eastern corner of Botswana, from the South African border. The city is served by the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport. It is an administrative district in its own right, but is the capital of the surrounding South-East District. Locals often refer to the city as ''GC or Motse-Mshate''. The city of Gaborone is named after Chief Gaborone of the Tlokwa tribe, who once controlled land nearby. Because it had no tribal affiliation and was close to fresh water, the city was planned to be the capital in the mid-1960s when the Bechuanaland Protectorate became an independent nation. The centre of the city is a lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It is connected to Zambia across the short Zambezi River border by the Kazungula Bridge. A country of slightly over 2.3 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. About 11.6 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—it has since transformed itself into an upper-middle-income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Modern-day humans first inhabited the country over 200,000 years ago. The Tswana ethn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tswana People
The Tswana ( tn, Batswana, singular ''Motswana'') are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The Tswana language is a principal member of the Sotho-Tswana language group. Ethnic Tswana made up approximately 85% of the population of Botswana in 2011. Batswana are the native people of south and eastern Botswana, and the Gauteng, North West, Northern Cape and Free State provinces of South Africa, where the majority of Batswana are located. History Early history of Batswana The Batswana are descended mainly from Bantu-speaking tribes along with the Khoi-San. Tswana tribe migrated southward to Africa around 600 CE, living in tribal enclaves as farmers and herders. Several Iron Age cultures flourished around the 900 CE, including the Toutswemogala Hill Iron Age settlement. The Toutswe were in the eastern region of what is now Botswana, relying on Tswana cattle breed held in kraals as their source of wealth. The arrival of the ancestors of the Tswana-spea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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