Tiny tales Stories of romance, ambition, kindness, and happiness

McCall Smith, internationally celebrated for his novels, especially the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, breaks new ground here with a collection of short stories spiked with some comics. The book is organized into thematic sections, including "Love," "Kindness," "Poignancy," and "Revenge," along with two especially whimsical sections: "Elevator Tales," about strange or serendipitous elevator encounters, and "Pope Ron," about the first Australian pope, who sports a tattoo of St. Francis of Assisi. McCall Smith's gift for quick characterization and his ability to conjure a range of moods, from philosophical to madcap, are on full display here. The best part of the book may be the sections titled "Amuse-Bouches." These are the graphic stories sprinkled throughout; artist Iain McIntosh, using heavy line drawings, illustrates McCall Smith's captions in panels that are sometimes zany-jokey, sometimes show sharp turns in fortune, and sometimes have an Aesop-like moral at the end. The "Amuse-Bouches" carry both serious and comic themes in groupings titled "Love," "Children and Their Parents," and "Life and Its Pitfalls" (with an incisive section called "Scientific Ethics: A Crash Course"). The graphic stories and the text-only ones all contain memorable characters, like a couple known as the "Virtue-Signallers," a Japanese passenger pusher, a contemporary Icarus on a hang glider, and a Russian cat with a face like Putin's. Quirky and delightful.

From the author of the best-selling "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series comes a collection of short tales that will charm listeners with their wit, absurdity, and delight. From a pope wanting to visit his native country of Australia, to a woman looking to meet people skydiving, to four dentists going on vacation together (with disastrous results), the breadth and scope of these stories will amuse and engage listeners. Thirty tiny tales are broken into sections on love, revenge, kindness, strangeness, and other manners of emotion. These brief stories are brought to life in inventive and amusing ways by a trio of narrators. Brian Nishii, Jamie Jackson, and Robert Ian Mackenzie each voice cleverness, banter, and hilarity with every breath. VERDICT This unique collection is proof that good things come in small packages.--Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN

DESCENT Molly wanted to do a parachute jump. "I wouldn't if I were you," said her friend. "What's the point?" That was a difficult question to answer. What was the point of jumping out of an aeroplane and tumbling down through the air? The deliberate courting of risk? Proving something about yourself--namely that you can jump out of an aero­plane? It was not a simple question to answer, and so Molly simply said, "I could meet somebody. You never know." "On a parachute jump?" her friend mocked. "Meet some­body? Are you serious?" But when she went to the parachute club, Molly met an exceedingly handsome instructor. He was known as Drop-Dead Gorgeous. This was not a good nickname for a para­chutist to have, but Molly did not know about it at the time. "All right, Molly," said Drop-Dead Gorgeous. "I'm going to strap you to me. Then we're going to jump out of the air­craft strapped together. Any questions?" Molly tried to think of a question, but could only think of asking, How long will it last? She was not thinking so much of the jump, but of how long she would be strapped to the instructor. They went up in the plane. Molly looked down at the ground below. The countryside was parcelled out in small, neat fields. Rivers were tiny veins of silver. The cars on the roads were minute beetles. The earth was so dear . . . "Com­fortable?" asked Drop-Dead Gorgeous. "Very," said Molly. The descent took very little time. The ground seemed to come up rather fast, but the instructor landed on his feet, cushioning Molly's landing. She looked into his eyes. "That was lovely," she said. He smiled at her. "Let's not unstrap just yet," he said. "We could go for coffee together." He did the walking. Strapped to him in her harness, her feet did not touch the ground, but she was happy to be carried--more than happy, perhaps. After coffee, he suggested they go for a walk. "No need to get unstrapped just yet," he said. They spent the day together, in close proximity. At the end, he said, "You know something? I feel very close to you." "So do I," said Molly. She was convinced that she had found the man she was looking for, and he felt the same thing, muta­tis mutandis, of course. "I'm going to give up jumping," he promised. She was relieved. He thought that her relief was connected with her concerns about the danger involved in parachuting, but that was not the real reason. She did not want him to be strapped to anybody else, which was quite reasonable, in her view. At the same time, she fully understood that a key ele­ment in any successful relationship was not to be too clingy. Excerpted from Tiny Tales: Stories of Romance, Ambition, Kindness, and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.