Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences — or even a page or two — we may see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than occurs in many much longer narratives.

In Tiny Tales Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness and happiness in thirty short stories that range in length from the short to the minuscule. The settings are as diverse as the characters — Scotland, England, Australia, the United States — combining to create a rich and surprising tableau. An Australian pope? A persuasive cosmetic surgeon? The world's laziest cat. A group of students living together and getting romantically entangled? All human and animal life is here — in miniature.

These stories are inspired and accompanied by the thirty magnificent strip Tiny Tales created by McCall Smith and illustrated by the brilliant Iain McIntosh — each cartoon a little gem of observation.