Love Over Scotland (2007)

In this cozy tea biscuit of a book, Akexander McCall Smith — author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and its sequels — makes a third trip to Edinburgh's 44 Scotland Street and its motley crew of tenants. College student Pat is torn between bad boy Wolf and too-kind Matthew; anthropologist Domenica ventures out to study pirates in the Malacca Straits; wunderkind Bertie escapes his overbearing mother on a school trip to Paris; and Cyril the terrier finds accidental freedom — and many strange smells. It's all rather inconsequential stuff, but Love Over Scotland is sweetly rendered, like an old-fashioned newspaper serial. B+