"One of the author's most beloved characters is back--and once again she will have to call upon her powers of deduction and her unflappable moral code to unravel a new philosophical mystery. In Edinburgh, rumors and gossip abound. But Isabel well knows that such things can't be taken at face value. Still, the latest whispers hint at mysterious goings-on, and who but Isabel can be trusted to get to the bottom of them? At the same time, she must deal...

Isabel and her fiancé know who they are and where they come from. But not everybody is so fortunate. Jane Cooper, a visiting Australian philosopher on sabbatical in Edinburgh, has more questions than answers. Adopted at birth, Jane is trying to find her biological father, but all she knows about him is that he was a student in Edinburgh years ago. When she asks for Isabel's help in this seemingly impossible search ... well, of course Isabel obliges....

"Our favorite moral philosopher is caught up in a delicate dispute between members of a prominent family as her husband, Jamie, is dragged into his own internecine rivalry. Isabel accepts an invitation to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but soon finds herself swept up in an all-too-familiar dilemma. David is the grandson of a Scottish clan chief and is supportive of Scottish nationalism. But his fervent beliefs...

'You can't go out of the house without tripping over a philosophical question.' That is a remark made by Isabel Dalhousie to Jamie, the bassoonist who is her handsome younger husband. Isabel's own life, of course, points to the truth of this observation: she seems to attract philosophical problems in much the same way as a magnet attracts iron filings. In this latest movement in the symphony of her life, Isabel is faced with novel challenges, each...

Isabel's son, Charlie, is now of an age (eighteen months) to have a social life, and so off they go to a birthday party, where, much to Isabel's surprise, she encounters an old adversary, Minty Auchterlonie, now a high-flying financier. Minty had seemed to Isabel a woman of ruthless ambition, but the question of her integrity had never been answered. Now, when Minty takes Isabel into her confidence about a personal matter, Isabel finds herself going...

A couple who are old friends of Isabel's ask for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster position at their alma mater. The board has four final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers in herself...

"A vibrant portrait of four college friends--Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley--who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II. The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth...

In this powerful memoir, philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. “One Hour in Paris” takes the reader on a harrowing yet inspirational journey through suffering and recovery both personal and global. We follow Freedman from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, then from a trauma center in Toronto to a rape clinic...

Despised by the intellectual establishment, Ayn Rand continues to attract many thousands of devoted followers. Her "Objectivist" movement preaches an uncompromising hard line on politics, art, sex, and psychological health. Though much has been written about Rand, The Ayn Rand Cult is the first book to explain the true origin of her ideas and to show how they were shaped into a new, atheistic religion. Jeff Walker shatters many myths about Rand, exposing...

Hypatia - brilliant mathematician, eloquent Neoplatonist, and a woman renowned for her beauty - was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415. She has been a legend ever since. In this engrossing book, Maria Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia's life and death, and new insight into her colorful world. Historians and poets, Victorian novelists and contemporary feminists have seen Hypatia as...