Pianos and Flowers

In Pianos and Flowers we are invited to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer.

Three sisters brought up in Penang, caught in the tide of war.

A group of small boys in a Glasgow slum their childhood blighted by poverty, their adult lives taking very different paths.

A young woman’s search for love in the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities.

And through all of these photographs, and all of these stories, there runs the same refrain: the possibilities of love, of friendship, of happiness lie before us.

Author Biography

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies. Since then he has devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world.