{"product_id":"blue-shoes-and-happiness-isbn-9781400075713","title":"Blue Shoes and Happiness","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife is good for Mma Ramotswe as she sets out with her usual resolve to solve people’s problems, heal their misfortunes, and untangle the mysteries that make life interesting. And life is never dull on Tlokweng Road. A new and rather too brusque advice columnist is appearing in the local paper. Then, a cobra is found in the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Recently, the Mokolodi Game Preserve manager feels an infectious fear spreading among his workers, and a local doctor may be falsifying blood pressure readings. To further complicate matters, Grace Makutsi may have scared off her own fiancé. Mma Ramotswe, however, is always up to the challenge. And \u003ci\u003eBlue Shoes and Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e will not fail to entertain Alexander McCall Smith’s oldest fans and newest converts with its great wit, charm, and great good will.\u003c\/p\u003e“Enchanting.”  —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e “Readers will find happiness and remember it too, long after closing \u003ci\u003eBlue Shoes.\u003c\/i\u003e”—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today \u003c\/i\u003e“Smith’s detours to such simple truths, combined with his . . . dry sense of humor make each of these ‘detective’ stories a delight. \u003ci\u003eBlue Shoes and Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e is at once a humble and ambitious title and emblematic of Smith’s accomplishment with these sweet, unassuming tales.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Columbus Dispatch \u003c\/i\u003eAlexander McCall Smith has written more than fifty books, but he is best known as the author of the internationally acclaimed series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, of which \u003ci\u003eBlue Shoes and Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e is the seventh volume. He has also written the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, the 44 Scotland Street series, as well as children's books. He was born in Zimbabwe, then called Southern Rhodesia, and educated there and in Scotland. He returned to Africa to help set up the new law school at the University of Botswana. He was also a Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.\u003cb\u003e   Aunty Emang, Solver of Problems\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When you are just the right age, as Mma Ramotswe was, and when you have seen  a bit of life, as Mma Ramotswe certainly had, then there are some things  that you just know. And one of the things that was well known to Mma  Ramotswe, only begetter of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Botswana's  only ladies' detective agency), was that there were two sorts of problem in  this life. Firstly, there were those problems-and they were major ones-about  which one could do very little, other than to hope, of course. These were  the problems of the land, of fields that were too rocky, of soil that blew  away in the wind, or of places where crops would just not thrive for some  sickness that lurked in the very earth. But looming greater than anything  else there was the problem of drought. It was a familiar feeling in  Botswana, this waiting for rain, which often simply did not come, or came  too late to save the crops. And then the land, scarred and exhausted, would  dry and crack under the relentless sun, and it would seem that nothing short  of a miracle would ever bring it to life. But that miracle would eventually  arrive, as it always had, and the landscape would turn from brown to green  within hours under the kiss of the rain. And there were other colours that  would follow the green; yellows, blues, reds would appear in patches across  the veld as if great cakes of dye had been crumbled and scattered by an  unseen hand. These were the colours of the wild flowers that had been  lurking there, throughout the dry season, waiting for the first drops of  moisture to awaken them. So at least that sort of problem had its solution,  although one often had to wait long, dry months for that solution to arrive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The other sorts of problems were those which people made for themselves.  These were very common, and Mma Ramotswe had seen many of them in the course  of her work. Ever since she had set up this agency, armed only with a copy  of Clovis Andersen's The Principles of Private Detection-and a great deal of  common sense-scarcely a day had gone by without her encountering some  problem which people had brought upon themselves. Unlike the first sort of  problem-drought and the like-these were difficulties that could have been  avoided. If people were only more careful, or behaved themselves as they  should, then they would not find themselves faced with problems of this  sort. But of course people never behaved themselves as they should. \"We are  all human beings,\" Mma Ramotswe had once observed to Mma Makutsi, \"and human  beings can't really help themselves. Have you noticed that, Mma? We can't  really help ourselves from doing things that land us in all sorts of  trouble.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mma Makutsi pondered this for a few moments. In general, she thought that  Mma Ramotswe was right about matters of this sort, but she felt that this  particular proposition needed a little bit more thought. She knew that there  were some people who were unable to make of their lives what they wanted  them to be, but then there were many others who were quite capable of  keeping themselves under control. In her own case, she thought that she was  able to resist temptation quite effectively. She did not consider herself to  be particularly strong, but at the same time she did not seem to be markedly  weak. She did not drink, nor did she over-indulge in food, or chocolate or  anything of that sort. No, Mma Ramotswe's observation was just a little bit  too sweeping and she would have to disagree. But then the thought struck  her: Could she resist a fine new pair of shoes, even if she knew that she  had plenty of shoes already (which was not the case)?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I think you're right, Mma,\" she said. \"Everybody has a weakness, and most  of us are not strong enough to resist it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mma Ramotswe looked at her assistant. She had an idea what Mma Makutsi's  weakness might be, and indeed there might even be more than one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Take Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, for example,\" said Mma Ramotswe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"All men are weak,\" said Mma Makutsi. \"That is well known.\" She paused. Now  that Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were married, it was possible that  Mma Ramotswe had discovered new weaknesses in him. The mechanic was a quiet  man, but it was often the mildest-looking people who did the most colourful  things, in secret of course. What could Mr J.L.B. Matekoni get up to? It  would be very interesting to hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Cake,\" said Mma Ramotswe quickly. \"That is Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's great  weakness. He cannot help himself when it comes to cake. He can be  manipulated very easily if he has a plate of cake in his hand.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mma Makutsi laughed. \"Mma Potokwane knows that, doesn't she?\" she said. \"I  have seen her getting Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to do all sorts of things for her  just by offering him pieces of that fruit cake of hers.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mma Ramotswe rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. Mma Potokwane, the  matron of the orphan farm, was her friend, and when all was said and done  she was a good woman, but she was quite ruthless when it came to getting  things for the children in her care. She it was who had cajoled Mr J.L.B.  Matekoni into fostering the two children who now lived in their house; that  had been a good thing, of course, and the children were dearly loved, but Mr  J.L.B. Matekoni had not thought the thing through and had failed even to  consult Mma Ramotswe about the whole matter. And then there were the  numerous occasions on which she had prevailed upon him to spend hours of his  time fixing that unreliable old water pump at the orphan farm-a pump which  dated back to the days of the Protectorate and which should have been  retired and put into a museum long ago. And Mma Potokwane achieved all of  this because she had a profound understanding of how men worked and what  their weaknesses were; that was the secret of so many successful women-they  knew about the weaknesses of men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That conversation with Mma Makutsi had taken place some days before. Now Mma  Ramotswe was sitting on the verandah of her house on Zebra Drive, late on a  Saturday afternoon, reading the paper. She was the only person in the house  at the time, which was unusual for a Saturday. The children were both out:  Motholeli had gone to spend the weekend with a friend whose family lived out  at Mogiditishane. This friend's mother had picked her up in her small truck  and had stored the wheelchair in the back with some large balls of string  that had aroused Mma Ramotswe's interest but which she had not felt it her  place to ask about. What could anybody want with such a quantity of string?  she wondered. Most people needed very little string, if any, in their lives,  but this woman, who was a beautician, seemed to need a great deal. Did  beauticians have a special use for string that the rest of us knew nothing  about? Mma Ramotswe asked herself. People spoke about face-lifts; did string  come into face-lifts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Puso, the boy, who had caused them such concern over his unpredictable  behaviour but who had recently become much more settled, had gone off with  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to see an important football match at the stadium. Mma  Ramotswe did not consider it important in the least-she had no interest in  football, and she could not see how it could possibly matter in the  slightest who succeeded in kicking the ball into the goal the most times-but  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni clearly thought differently. He was a close follower and  supporter of the Zebras, and tried to get to the stadium whenever they were  playing. Fortunately the Zebras were doing well at the moment, and this,  thought Mma Ramotswe, was a good thing: it was quite possible, she felt,  that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's depression, from which he had made a good  recovery, could recur if he, or the Zebras, were to suffer any serious  set-back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So now she was alone in the house, and it seemed very quiet to her. She had  made a cup of bush tea and had drunk that thoughtfully, gazing out over the  rim of her cup onto the garden to the front of the house. The sausage fruit  tree, the moporoto, to which she had never paid much attention, had taken it  upon itself to produce abundant fruit this year, and four heavy  sausage-shaped pods had appeared at the end of a branch, bending that limb  of the tree under their weight. She would have to do something about that,  she thought. People knew that it was dangerous to sit under such trees, as  the heavy fruit could crack open a skull if it chose to fall when a person  was below. That had happened to a friend of her father's many years ago, and  the blow that he had received had cracked his skull and damaged his brain,  making it difficult for him to speak. She remembered him when she was a  child, struggling to make himself understood, and her father had explained  that he had sat under a sausage tree and had gone to sleep, and this was the  result.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She made a mental note to warn the children and to get Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to  knock the fruit down with a pole before anybody was hurt. And then she  turned back to her cup of tea and to her perusal of the copy of The Daily  News, which she had unfolded on her lap. She had read the first four pages  of the paper, and had gone through the small advertisements with her usual  care. There was much to be learned from the small advertisements, with their  offers of irrigation pipes for farmers, used vans, jobs of various sorts,  plots of land with house construction permission, and bargain furniture. Not  only could one keep up to date with what things cost, but there was also a  great deal of social detail to be garnered from this source. That day, for  instance, there was a statement by a Mr Herbert Motimedi that he would not  be responsible for any debts incurred by Mrs Boipelo Motimedi, which  effectively informed the public that Herbert and Boipelo were no longer on  close terms-which did not surprise Mma Ramotswe, as it happened, because she  had always felt that that particular marriage was not a good idea, in view  of the fact that Boipelo Motimedi had gone through three husbands before she  found Herbert, and two of these previous husbands had been declared  bankrupt. She smiled at that and skimmed over the remaining advertisements  before turning the page and getting to the column that interested her more  than anything else in the newspaper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Some months earlier, the newspaper had announced to its readers that it  would be starting a new feature. \"If you have any problems,\" the paper said,  \"then you should write to our new exclusive columnist, Aunty Emang, who will  give you advice on what to do. Not only is Aunty Emang a BA from the  University of Botswana, but she also has the wisdom of one who has lived  fifty-eight years and knows all about life.\" This advance notice brought in  a flood of letters, and the paper had expanded the amount of space available  for Aunty Emang's sound advice. Soon she had become so popular that she was  viewed as something of a national institution and was even named in  Parliament when an opposition member brought the house down with the  suggestion that the policy proposed by some hapless minister would never  have been approved of by Aunty Emang.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mma Ramotswe had chuckled over that, as she now chuckled over the plight of  a young student who had written a passionate love letter to a girl and had  delivered it, by mistake, to her sister. \"I am not sure what to do,\" he had  written to Aunty Emang. \"I think that the sister is very pleased with what I  wrote to her as she is smiling at me all the time. Her sister, the girl I  really like, does not know that I like her and maybe her own sister has told  her about the letter which she has received from me. So she thinks now that  I am in love with her sister, and does not know that I am in love with her.  How can I get out of this difficult situation?\" And Aunty Emang, with her  typical robustness, had written: \"Dear Anxious in Molepolole: The simple  answer to your question is that you cannot get out of this. If you tell one  of the girls that she has received a letter intended for her sister, then  she will become very sad. Her sister (the one you really wanted to write to  in the first place) will then think that you have been unkind to her sister  and made her upset. She will not like you for this. The answer is that you  must give up seeing both of these girls and you should spend your time  working harder on your examinations. When you have a good job and are  earning some money, then you can find another girl to fall in love with. But  make sure that you address any letter to that girl very carefully.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There were two other letters. One was from a boy of fourteen who had been  moved to write to Aunty Emang about being picked upon by his teacher. \"I am  a hard-working boy,\" he wrote. \"I do all my schoolwork very carefully and  neatly. I never shout in the class or push people about (like most other  boys). When my teacher talks, I always pay attention and smile at him. I do  not trouble the girls (like most other boys). I am a very good boy in every  sense. Yet my teacher always blames me for anything that goes wrong and  gives me low marks in my work. I am very unhappy. The more I try to please  this teacher, the more he dislikes me. What am I doing wrong?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. That's what you are doing wrong:  everything. But how could one explain to a fourteen-year-old boy that one  should not try too hard; which was what he was doing and which irritated his  teacher. It was better, she thought, to be a little bit bad in this life,  and not too perfect. If you were too perfect, then you invited exactly this  sort of reaction, even if teachers should be above that sort of thing. But  what, she wondered, would Aunty Emang say?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Dear Boy,\" wrote Aunty Emang. \"Teachers do not like boys like you...\"","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302213472485,"sku":"NP9781400075713","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400075713.jpg?v=1767722849","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/blue-shoes-and-happiness-isbn-9781400075713","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}