One of Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling series and the funniest, 44 Scotland Street is the world's longest-running serialized novel and continues to be published weekly in The Scotsman newspaper for three months of each year.

The 44 Scotland Street series is truly heart-warming, terribly funny and filled with the day-to-day lives of the residents of 44 Scotland Street, a converted Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh. The first five novels chronicle the episodes that begin when 20-year-old Pat rents a room from handsome and cocky Bruce, and inherits some delightfully colourful neighbours: Domenica, an insightful and eccentric widow; Bertie, a 5-year-old who’s mastered both saxophone and Italian; and Irene, his overbearing mother. Pat has a new job at an art gallery, where her contemplative boss, Matthew, spends most of his time drinking coffee in a local café and discussing matters great and small, with barista Big Lou, wise and lovelorn. Pat’s duties are light, until she realizes that one of their paintings may be an undiscovered work of a renowned Scottish artist and she discovers that one of their customers may be in on the secret. Add to this a fancy ball, love triangles, an encounter with a famous crime writer, the dog-napping of painter Angus Lordie’s gold-toothed dog with a heart of gold, Cyril, and McCall Smith’s observations on a wide range of issues, including the merits of various forms of olive oil, the domestic economy of contemporary pirate households and our human search for happiness, and you have an incredibly entertaining and nuanced portrait of Edinburgh society.
In the first five novels—44 Scotland Street, Espresso Tales, Love Over Scotland, The World According to Bertie and The Unbearable Lightness of Scones—full of gently satirical humour and sympathy for his characters, McCall Smith offers an affectionate portrait of a city and its people who, in his own words, “make Edinburgh one of the most vibrant and interesting places in the world.”