Let us return once more to the simple pleasures and abundant joy of life found in Gabarone, Botswana, on Tlokweng Road, site of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s Speedy Motors auto repair shop and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency headed by the redoubtable Precious Ramotswe.

“Girls in Trucks” is set in Charleston, S.C., and shows the reader the inside world of the Camellia Society, a social school of sorts for up-and-coming Southern debutantes.

If there were pictures in the dictionary, Blake Williams would be next to the word “rogue.”

In 2004, the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to a Kenyan woman who loved growing things.

“Letter from Point Clear” starts out beautifully, introducing the characters and describing their surroundings in wonderfully descriptive phrases, and emotionally engaging the reader in their lives, which, for the most part are in turmoil from the start.

Movie marketers know how to entice an audience by creating sizzling trailers.

Diabetes, heart disease, depression, bowel troubles, breast and prostate cancer: These diseases are prevalent in the United States.

We almost had a nuclear war.

It is a sign of maturity in the arts when Native Americans are depicted neither as bloodthirsty savages standing in the way of progress, nor as peace-loving environmentalists living in an Eden-like environment.

When I was a young man, I had the good fortune to be able to live for several years in Europe at government expense.

Anyone who read and enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” or “The Tipping Point,” or Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s “Freakonomics,” will love “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” in which author Leonard Mlodinow explores how chance plays a major role — perhaps more major than you’ve ever thought — in determining the outcome of our lives.

What happens when the medical examiner for New York City and an attorney find themselves working together?