44 Scotland Street: Alexander McCall Smith

Scotland Street, in Edinburgh's Bohemian New Town, has more than its fair share of eccentrics and students. When Pat - on her second gap year and a source of worry to her parents - is accepted as a new tenant at number 44, she isn't sure how long she'll last. Her flatmate Bruce, a rugby-playing surveyor, is impossibly narcissistic, carelessly philandering and maddeningly handsome. Downstairs is gloriously pretentious Irene, whose precocious 5 year old is in therapy after setting fire to his father's copy of The Guardian. And then there is shrewd, intellectual Domenica MacDonald mysteriously employed but a sharp-eyed observer of the house's activities in her spare time...https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/espresso-tales-alexander-mccall-smith/