“Years ago, she’d taught herself never to forget that everyone in her late-night world wanted something from her: a drink or two, a name and a number, a subtle stroke or an obvious grope, forgiveness for spilling or spewing or stepping out of line, a hit of blow or a blow job in the back-seat. They wanted to be seen and heard through the lights and above the noise any way… Everyone in her life, Maureen knew, was a buyer or a seller, usually both, all the time. That fact was the cornerstone on which she’d built her survival. Hers was not a world where a girl could let her guard down. For anyone. Ever.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JUN 11, 2011)

Physically, 29 year-old Maureen Coughlin is a wisp of a woman, 5’ 4” tall and 100 pounds. Emotionally, she’s a powerhouse, a person with acumen, tenacity, and a wild streak just this side of the Serengeti. She works as a waitress, the same job for the last 10 years and she’s just sick of it. It’s a nowhere job and she’s going nowhere. She lives and works on Staten Island in a faux chic bar with the emphasis on “faux.” She’s started college and dropped out more than once but she knows that waitressing is not where she wants to find herself down the pike. She lives alone and has no one special in her life except her mother who gives her more trouble than solace.

She’s not averse to starting her shifts with a drink and a bit of cocaine to get her going. For a while she had a pretty bad cocaine problem but she’s kicked that. Now, her use is just recreational. Her alcohol consumption, however, is pretty heavy. As The Devil She Knows opens, Maureen is just coming off her shift. It’s near morning and she’s strung out and in a black-out, not even realizing where she is. She finds herself in Dennis’s, her boss’s, office. As she leaves the office she sees Dennis on his knees giving a blow job to Frank Sebastian, candidate for State Senate. She pretends she’s seen nothing and leaves hoping that will be the end of it. Maureen is discreet and knows when to keep a secret. However, the next morning Dennis is found dead, ostensibly a suicide on the railroad tracks. Maureen believes it’s not a suicide because just before she was leaving the bar, Dennis told her he wanted to talk to her. Also, she knows Dennis is not the type to take his life. Now she’s in a real quandary.

She approaches John, her ex-boss at the bar she used to work at. He encourages her to call the cops and gives her the name of one that he trusts as honest and good. It just so happens though that Waters, the cop, has a history with Sebastian. They used to work together in Brooklyn. Something happened that caused Sebastian to retire as a hero and Waters to be transferred to Staten Island. Waters is old and tired. Maureen thinks of him as a lumbering great bear. Maureen confides in him and tells him what happened between Dennis and Sebastian. Waters promises to work on it. He takes her allegations and suspicions very seriously.

What Maureen hadn’t anticipated, however, is just how bad a guy Sebastian is. He is really bad, no shades of gray here. He has killed before and he has killed many people. Maureen finds her apartment broken into, her television smashed, and warning cards laid carefully under her mattress. Sebastian is not a light-weight and Maureen knows she’s in deep trouble. Waters advises her to lay low and stay at her mother’s house. Maureen doesn’t like taking advice or orders. She likes to take things into her own hands and her brain is telling her to find Sebastian and face off.

The book’s plot is pretty basic in its David and Goliath theme – little woman against big and powerful man. However, it’s well-written, has great quips and kept up my interest throughout. Maureen is a wonderful character. The reader feels like they really know her, along with the others who surround her. The author, Bill Loehfelm, is great with building a character from scratch. We get a real sense of everyone in the book and the characters are all there for a purpose – no loose ends and no rabbit trails.

When the confrontation comes, and we know it will come, we’re all rooting for Maureen. Bill Loefelm started his career as the first Amazon Breakthrough writer, winning their award for his novel Fresh Kills. It appears that The Devil She Knows is the first in a series starring Maureen. I look forward to the subsequent books.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 24, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bill Loehfelm
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Missing Persons by Claire O’Donohue

Bibliography:

• Fresh Kills (2008)
• Bloodroot (2009)

Maureen Coughlin series:

• The Devil She Knows (May 2011)

“I could hear the sincerity in my voice. I could imitate sincerity so well that even I believed it.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JUN 4, 2011)

Clare O’Donohue knows what she is talking about in Missing Persons, a satirical and amusing novel about a Chicago-based freelance television producer who specializes in true crime stories. Since O’Donohue has been a producer, she understands “the frustration, annoyance, and craziness” that go with the territory.

Kate is an adorable character who is bright, hard-working, blunt, sassy, and very skilled at what she does. However, she would be the first to admit that she is driven and will do almost anything to get a good sound bite. It’s her mission to manipulate the people she interviews. If she wants someone to cry, she knows how to make it happen. It is no wonder that Kate has become so jaded. Her commitment to her work may be one of the factors that broke up her fifteen-year marriage. She is separated from her soon to be ex-husband, Frank, an aspiring artist. While Kate earned a living, Frank dreamed, puttered, and made promises that he never kept. Now he has found a new significant other and is moving on with his life.

A shocking tragedy changes everything and Kate becomes involved in her own personal drama. In addition, she has a new assignment for a show called Missing Persons. With the help of her cameraman and audio guy, Kate is conducting interviews with everyone who knew Theresa Moretti, a twenty-two year old woman who vanished over a year ago. Did Theresa walk away from her life voluntarily or did someone abduct her? Kate, an amateur sleuth, conducts her own informal inquiries into the Moretti case.

This is a clever and engrossing mystery that, happily, avoids most of the clichés that make readers wince. There is no gloppy romance for Kate; the trajectory of the investigation goes off in unexpected and original directions; and the ending is surprisingly tame and free of melodrama. Even more unusual is the fact that Kate befriends Frank’s mistress, Vera Bingham, who seems to be a rather nice person.

There is witty and sometimes profane banter between Kate and her crew–her cameraman, Andres, and her sound man, Victor. We also get an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the making of a low-budget cable television program. Kate’s profession is challenging and highly competitive. She sometimes loathes herself for using devious tactics to get the footage that she needs. In a particularly telling scene, Kate says about a woman she is interviewing, “She was so vulnerable, in so much pain. It would look great on camera.” How cynical can you get? This is a lighthearted story with some serious themes: First, television executives often cater to the lowest common denominator, exploiting an audience that craves sensationalism. (“People love other people’s misery.”) In addition, Kate, in a rare moment of introspection, begins to understand the part that she played in the dissolution of her marriage. She realizes belatedly that, had she been a bit more unselfish, compassionate, and giving, she and her husband might have managed to stay together.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Plume; 1 edition (May 31, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Clare O’Donohue
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:Burning Garbo by Robert Eversz Look Again by Lisa Scottoline

Bibliography:

Someday Quilts Mysteries:

• The Lover’s Knot (2008)
• A Drunkard’s Path (2009)
• The Double Cross (2910)
• The Devil’s Puzzle (September 2011)

Kate Conway Mysteries:

• Missing Persons (May 2011)

“I stared calmly into his glittering eyes. What countenance he possessed! The features nobly drawn, firm in every outline, the lips full and sensual; the pallor of the skin akin to a god’s beneath the dark sweep of hair. It was the face of an angel—but a fallen one. Lucifer’s visage must have held just such heartrending beauty.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (DEC 16, 2010)

In Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, by Stephanie Barron, Jane and her brother, Henry, embark on an expedition to the seaside to recover their spirits after the passing of Henry’s wife, Eliza. In the spring of 1813, Brighton was a “glittering resort and “the summer haunt of expensive Fashionables,” including the profligate Prince Regent and his cronies. Although Jane is at first is aghast at the thought of staying in a vulgar place devoted to “indecent revels,” she realizes that “Henry would never survive his grief by embracing melancholy.” In fact, “Brighton, in all its strumpet glory, was exactly what he required.”

Jane, who is thirty-seven (“the autumn of my life is come—my hopes of happiness long since buried in an unmarked grave”), knows that, where she is headed, men and women will be parading about in their finery, while she will be clad in dark-colored clothes and limited to activities appropriate for one in mourning. Her thoughts turn in another direction, however, when Jane and Henry, on the way to their destination, rescue a fifteen-year-old girl named Catherine Twining from the clutches of Lord Byron, who had abducted and tied her up “in a manner painful to observe.” Even though the celebrated poet had many paramours, he was selfishly determined to add Catherine to his list of conquests, whether she willed it or not.

Jane and Henry’s stay in Brighton proves to be unsettling. A brutal murder takes place, for which Byron may very well hang, and Jane and Henry collect information that will help them learn the truth of the matter. Throughout, Ms. Barron lavishly describes “the frivolity and display, the pretty and available women, the horse races and the crowd of gamblers at Raggett’s Club.” Among the large cast of characters are: Lady Desdemona, Countess of Swithin, the niece of Jane’s late, lamented Lord Harold Trowbridge; General Twining, Catherine’s bitter, rude, and extremely strict father; Hendred Smalls, an unctuous and unappealing clergyman who hopes to win Catherine’s hand; Lady Caroline Lamb, a madwoman who ostentatiously throws herself at Byron even though he repeatedly rejects her; and, hovering over them all is the Prince Regent, who enjoys wine, women, and the gaming tables.

Barron is a student of all things Austen, and her research into the life of this great novelist enriches the narrative. However, it should be noted that the premise is a product of the author’s imagination; there is no record of Austen having ever visited Brighton or, indeed, having met Lord Byron. Although Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron is mildly entertaining, it is also excessively talky, overly cluttered, and somewhat pretentious. In addition, the mystery is neither particularly believable nor suspenseful. The novel’s value lies mainly in Barron’s meticulous description of the personalities, fashions, and mores of the upper classes during the Regency period. Readers who wish to immerse themselves in the pursuits, debaucheries, and eccentricities of the wealthy and infamous in early nineteenth century England may find this work of fiction diverting.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 32 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bantam (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Stephanie Barron
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Wolf

Bibliography:

• A Flaw in the Blood (2008)
• The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (September 2009)

Jane Austin Mysteries:

• Jane And The Unpleasantness At Scargrove Manor (1996)
• Jane and the Man of the Cloth (1996)
• Jane and the Wandering Eye (1998)
• Jane and the Genius of the Place (2000)
• Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2001)
• Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (2002)
• Jane and the Ghosts of Netley (200x)
• Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (2005)
• Jane and the Barque of Frailty (2007)
• Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (September 2010)

Writing as Francine Mathews:

• The Secret Agent (2002)
• The Cutout (2001)
• Blown (2005)
• The Alibi Club (2007)

Nantucket Mysteries:

• Death in the Off-Season (0688134432)
• Death in Rough Water (1995)
• Death in Mood Indigo (1997)
• Death in a Cold Hard Light (2007)

“You only saw a bit of danger and intrigue and thought you would like to have it for yourself. But you must open your eyes to the rest of it. To the tedium and the hard work and the dedication it requires. You cannot play at being a detective, Julia. To do so demeans the work of one who does it seriously.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 26, 2010)

Sometimes, marriage is the kiss of death for a series in which a man and woman quarrel incessantly but finally realize that they are essential to one another’s happiness. Fortunately, the union of Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane enhances rather than detracts from Deanna Raybourn’s Dark Road to Darjeeling. The author keeps us engrossed by removing her characters from their comfort zone and placing them in a lovely Indian tea garden amid scenic mountains and valleys; making it clear that although Julia and Brisbane remain passionately in love (as we are reminded incessantly every time they repair to their bedchamber), they still have issues about Julia’s habit of courting danger; and providing supporting roles for Julia’s sarcastic siblings, Portia and Plum, Julia’s grumpy maid, Morag, and Portia’s sweet-natured friend, Jane, who is widowed and expecting her first child.

The year is 1889, and after a nine-month honeymoon during which Julia and her husband explored “the most remote corners of the Mediterranean,” the newlyweds are ready to go home. Portia has other ideas. She drags Julia to India to visit Jane, whose husband, Freddy Cavendish, recently died in India under mysterious circumstances. Not only does Portia want to spend time with Jane, whom she adores, but she wants to determine if Freddy died from natural causes. Naturally, Julia likes nothing more than a good mystery and she wastes no time sticking her nose into the affairs of every individual in the vicinity. Julia learns that quite a few people, including Jane herself, had sound reasons to want Freddy dead. During the course of the narrative, Julia’s husband, who makes his living as a private enquiry agent, clashes with someone from his past, liaisons are formed between unlikely couples, and the March siblings all evolve emotionally in ways that they never could have foreseen.

Dark Road to Darjeeling is an uproarious, lively, perfectly paced, and thoroughly entertaining romp, filled with witty dialogue and offbeat characters. They include a perpetually inebriated physician, a female photographer named Cassandra Pennyfeather who is unabashedly avant-garde, a “White Rajah” who, on the surface, seems to be “a darling old gentleman,” Freddy’s stern and formidable spinster aunt, Camellia Cavendish, and a young boy with a zeal for scientific experimentation. There is even a man-eating (or possibly woman-eating) tiger roaming the neighborhood. The ladies are instructed to shoot themselves rather than allow the tiger to tear them limb from limb. Red herrings abound and nothing, we soon ascertain, can be taken at face value.

As if all this were not enough to keep us turning pages, Raybourn touches on a few serious themes, such as the role of women in British society; the treatment of servants and others of the “lower classes;” and the inequities in the laws of inheritance. Julia’s brother, Plum, brings up a particularly telling point when he says of himself, Julia, and Portia, “We are dilettantes, but never virtuosos. We have talent, but because of father’s money we are never forced to use that talent to drive us.” Julia comes to realize that, as a well-to-do and pampered daughter of an earl, she must find more productive ways to fill her time. Otherwise, she may wind up spending her days as little more than a decorative ornament, unhappy and unfulfilled.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 56 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mira; Original edition (October 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Deena Raybourn
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Silent on the Moor Silent in the Sanctuary Silent in the Grave

Bibliography:

• Silent in the Grave (January 2007)
• Silent in the Sanctuary (January 2008)
• Silent on the Moor (March 2009)
• Dark Road to Darjeeling (October 2010)

“I lifted my hand and touched a fingertip to his cheek. He jerked backward as if I had scorched him, dropping his hand from my face. He shook his head slowly, as if emerging from a dream.

‘Do not push me too far, Julia. You have meddled with me in ways I ought never to have permitted. But I will finish what I began here, and you will not interfere with me again.’ ”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Eleanor Bukowsky (MAY 30, 2009)

Deanna Raybourn’s Silent on the Moor, the third installment in her series featuring Lady Julia Grey, opens in London in 1888. Thirty-year old Julia is about to embark on a journey to visit the mysterious and mercurial inquiry agent, Nicholas Brisbane. The bad-tempered but very attractive Brisbane, who has gypsy blood and a mysterious past, pulls Julia towards him with one hand and drives her away with the other. She has not seen him since he purchased Grimsgrave Hall, a dilapidated house on the Yorkshire moors. He lives there with his servants and the last of the Allenby clan, a proud but down-on-their luck family whose fortunes have taken a steep decline. Brisbane had originally asked Portia, Julia’s outspoken sister, to help him organize his household, but he has since rescinded the invitation. Although Julia knows that Brisbane will be greatly displeased, she decides that she must see him again in order to find out if they are destined to be together.

What follows is a Gothic tale of long buried secrets, forbidden passion, and murder. After she settles in at Grimsgrave, Julia, as is her wont, sticks her nose in where it does not belong. She is determined to uncover the truth behind the strange behavior of Hilda Allenby, her beautiful sister, Ailith, and their infirm and sanctimonious mother. In addition, Julia decides to investigate the affairs of the late Egyptologist, Redwall Allenby, Hilda’s and Ailith’s brother, who was reputed to be cruel, selfish, and deceitful.

Readers are strongly advised to finish Raybourn’s first two books, Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary, before they pick up Silent on the Moor. This will provide a clearer picture of Lady Julia’s evolution from a cosseted wife “wrapped in cotton wool” to the audacious, forthright, and daring woman she has become. Raybourn has written an entertaining and intelligent novel that seamlessly and elegantly combines humor, mystery, and romance. Silent on the Moor is distinguished by its witty dialogue, intriguing and well-developed characters, impeccable sense of time and place, and immensely absorbing plot. Those who are already hooked on Deanna Raybourn’s fiction will be eager to spend more time with the unique and captivating Lady Julia Grey.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 88 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mira (March 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Deanna Raybourn
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Dark Road to Darjeeling Silent in the Sanctuary Silent in the Grave

Bibliography:

• Silent in the Grave (January 2007)
• Silent in the Sanctuary (January 2008)
• Silent on the Moor (March 2009)
• Dark Road to Darjeeling (October 2010)

“We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. And that applied not only to people, but to countries too. Things could go wrong and entire nations could be led into a world of living nightmare; it had happened, and was happening still. Poor Africa; it did not deserve the things that had been done to it. Africa, that could stand for love and happiness and joy, could also be a place of suffering and shame.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Mary Whipple (MAY 27, 2009)

Not a believer that change is entirely for the better in Botswana society, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the “traditionally built” owner of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency in Gaborone, has decided that cars are among the biggest agents of change, making people lazy. She has therefore decided to walk the two miles each way to her office, located beside the garage where her husband Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni operates a car repair service. She secretly admits, however, that the real reason she is walking is that her beloved little white van, now twenty-two years old, is making strange noises, and she fears that when Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni hears them that he will decide her little van can no longer be repaired.

Focusing on relationships and the patterns of politeness that make good communication flourish, the novel, though ostensibly a mystery, is filled with warm, homey touches—the giggling of Motholeli, Mma Ramotswe’s wheelchair-bound foster child, when she plays with her friends; Mma’s need to urge the children to do their homework; her foster son Puso’s love of football (like the passionate love for football among all her other male acquaintances); her protectiveness toward her husband; her need to make Mma Grace Makutsi, her assistant at the detective agency, a little more flexible about what she believes to be “the rules”; and her empathy toward Fanwell, a young apprentice who works for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni and supports five other family members.

Her innate kindness toward others, and the belief that “there is plenty of work for love to do,” dominate all aspects of Mma Ramotswe’s life, because, she believes, “We [are] all at the mercy of chance… When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others…we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.” Her husband, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, is just as thoughtful, donating one day every two weeks to help a needy friend keep abreast of the work that is piling up in his shop. As always he keeps the machinery at the local orphanage in working order, even when it is costly to himself.

More sentimental and less dependent upon plot than some of the earlier novels in this endearing series, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built intersperses local stories, gossip, and legends among several (sometimes thin) plot lines—Mma Ramotswe’s love for her little white van and her unhappiness about its possible future; a mysterious case of the Kalahari Swoopers, a great football team that is losing too many games, a particular worry for its owner, Mr. Molofololo; the fate of the romance between Mma Grace Makutsi and her fiancé, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, after he hires Violet Sephotho to work in his furniture shop; and the case of a woman who is trying to live with two husbands.

Characters familiar to readers of earlier novels also make their appearances here. Charlie, the apprentice mechanic for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, still does not like to work, if he can avoid it, but he plays a key role in resolving one of the plot lines. Glamorous Violet Sephotho, a poor student at the secretarial college where Grace Makutsi earned 97% on her final exam, lies about her exam scores to get a job with Phuti Radiphuti, intending to use her considerable charms to steal him away from his fiancée Grace. Mr. Polopetsi, a man saved from disaster in a previous novel, and who now works for Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, helps out at the detective agency and offers advice to Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Potokwane, who runs a large orphanage, drifts in and out of the action here, too, always in need of help.

“Cozy,” in the warmest sense of the word, the novel makes readers feel good about life, about principled women like Mma Ramotswe, about the pace of life which allows people to slow down or stop in order to be kind to others, and about the value of communication and good will in the solving of big problems. Whereas Mma Makutsi believes that “The trouble with this country [is] that there are too many people sitting down in other people’s chairs,” Mma Ramotswe believes that “if a chair is empty, then anybody should be welcome to sit in it…Maybe the real problem with the modern world,” she emphasizes, “[is] that not enough of us [are] prepared to share our chairs.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 163 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pantheon (April 21, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alexander McCall Smith
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Lots!  Read reviews of: The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party The Unbearable Lightness of Scones other books in this series The 44 Scotland St. series

Bibliography:

• Children of Wax: African Folk Tales (1991)
• Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations (1995)
• The Girl Who Married a Lion: and Other Tales from Africa (2004)
• Trains and Lovers (June 2013)
• The Forever Girl (February 2014)

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series:

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (1999)
• Tears of the Giraffe (2000)
• Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)
• The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)
• The Full Cupboard of Life (2004)
• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)
• Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)
• The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007)
• The Miracle at Speedy Motors (April 2008)
• Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009)
• The Double Comfort Safari Club (2010)
• The Saturday Big Tent Wedding (2011))
• The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (2012)
• The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (October 2013)

44 Scotland Street

• 44 Scotland Street (2005)
• Expresso Tales 2006)
• Love Over Scotland (2007)
• The World According to Bertie (2008)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (2010)
• Sunshine on Scotland Street (2012)
• Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers (July 2013)
• Bertie Plays the Blues (October 2013)

Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series:

• Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004)
• The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (2004)
• At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (2004)
• The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom (2005)

Isabel Dalhousie Mystery:

• The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)
• Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (2005)
• The Right Attitude to Rain (2006)
• The Careful Use of Compliments (2007)
• Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (2008)
• The Lost Art of Gratitude (2009)
• The Charming Quirks of Others (2010)

Children’s Books:

• The Perfect Hamburger (1982)
• Alix and the Tigers (1988)
• Film Boy (1989)
• Uncle Gangster (1989)
• The Tin Dog (1990)
• Suzy Magician (1990)
• Jeffery’s Joke Machine (1990)
• Akimbo and the Elephants (1990)
• Calculator Annie (1991)
• Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats (1991)
• The Girl Who Changed the Weather (1991)
• The Popcorn Pirates (1991)
• The Spaghetti Tangle (1991)
• The Doughnut Ring (1992)
• Springy Jane (1992)
• Akimbo and the Lions (1992)
• Who Invented Peanut Butter? (1993)
• My Chameleon Uncle (1993)
• Paddy and the Ratcatcher (1994)
• Akimbo and the Crocodile Man (1995)
• The Muscle Machine (1995)
• Billy Rubbish (1995)
• The Bubblegum Tree (1996)
• Bursting Balloons Mystery (1997)
• The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean (1997)
• Chocolate Money Mystery (1999)
• Teacher Trouble (2000)
• Monkey Boy (2000)

Other:

• The Criminal Law of Botswana
• Changing People: The Law and Ethics of Behavior Modification (1994)
• Health Resources and the Law (1994)
• Forensic Aspects of Sleep (1997)

Movies from books:

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Season 1 (2008)