Tiny Tales

'Windows on the world … deft and funny and smart' - Financial Times

Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences – or even a page or two – we may see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than occurs in many much longer narratives.

In Tiny Tales Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness and happiness in stories that range in length from the short to the minuscule. The settings are as diverse as the characters – Scotland, England, Australia, the United States – combining to create a rich and surprising tableau. An Australian pope? The world's laziest cat? A group of students living together and getting romantically entangled? All human and animal life is here – in miniature.

These stories, divided into sections, are accompanied by magnificent illustrations, like literary amuse-bouches, created by McCall Smith and illustrated by the brilliant Iain McIntosh – each one a little gem of observation.