Mystery Author Luncheon Events

Murder By The Book welcomes today's finest crime novelists for the store's ongoing Mystery Author Luncheon Series. Past speakers include: Michael Connelly, Carolyn Hart, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Anne Perry, Laurie R. King, Harlan Coben, Diane Mott Davidson, Nevada Barr, and many more. Each takes place at The Briar Club (2603 Timmons Lane @ Westheimer). Tickets are available only at Murder By The Book (not at The Briar Club), until 3 days before each event or until sold out. The authors' latest novel will be for sale at each event. We only accept cash, check, or money order for luncheon tickets.

Have lunch & bush tea with
Alexander McCall Smith
Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
$60 (includes lunch, a cup of bush tea, & a copy of The Double Comfort Safari Club, the upcoming Mma. Ramotswe book)
Tickets on sale now! As of Feb. 17, we have 75 tickets left. Purchase your tickets soon!

Alexander McCall Smith has written more than 60 books, including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children's books. Referred to as our new P.G. Wodehouse, he is best known for his internationally acclaimed "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series," which rapidly rose to the top of the bestseller lists throughout the world. The fifth novel in the series, The Full Cupboard of Life, received the Saga Award for Wit. The series has now been translated into 45 languages and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. The first episode of a film adaptation, directed by Anthony Minghella, and produced by the Weinstein Company, premiered on HBO in March 2009. Another series, beginning with The Sunday Philosophy Club, about an intriguing woman named Isabel Dalhousie, appeared in 2004 and immediately leapt onto national bestseller lists, as did sequels, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments; and The Comfort of a Muddy Saturday. The sixth Dalhousie novel The Lost Art of Gratitude (fall 2009). McCall Smith’s serial novel, 44 Scotland Street, was published in book form to great acclaim in 2005, followed by Espresso Tales, Love Over Scotland, The World According to Bertie and The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. In late 2008, the serial novel, Corduroy Mansions, depicting the lives of the inhabitants of a large Pimlico house, began to be published and podcasted in 100 daily web episodes by the UK’s Daily Telegraph prior to its hardcover release in 2009. Alexander McCall Smith published a solo novel, La’s Orchestra Saves the World in December 2009.

In addition, McCall Smith’s delightful German professor series -- Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances -- were published in the US in January 2005. He is also the author of several children’s books, including the Akimbo series, about a boy in Africa, the Harriet Bean series, the Max & Maddy series and The Perfect Hamburger and other Delicious Stories. Pantheon has published Alexander McCall Smith’s collection of African folktales,
The Girl Who Married a Lion. McCall Smith is also the author of Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams, a contemporary reworking of a beloved Celtic myth and Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations,
a collection of short stories examining the mysteries of dating and courtship.

McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe and was educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor in Scotland, and it was in this role that he first returned to Africa to work in Botswana, where he helped to set up a new law school at the University of Botswana. For many years he was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, and has been a visiting professor at a number
of other universities elsewhere, including ones in Italy and the United States. He is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh.

In addition to his university work, McCall Smith was for four years the vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the UK, the chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee, and a member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library Award, the United Kingdom’s Author of The Year Award in 2004 and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. In 2007 he was made a CBE for his services to literature in the Queen’s New Year’s Honor List. He holds honorary doctorates from 10 universities, most recently from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON FOR LAURIE R. KING (MAY 4) AND LEE CHILD (MAY 21).

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