McCall Smith, Alexander

Before becoming the first female private investigator in Botswana, eight-year-old Precious Ramotswe tracks down a thief who has been stealing her classmates' snacks.

Eight-year-old Precious Ramotswe becomes friends with siblings Teb and Pontsho and their pet meerkat, Kosi, and when her new friends' cow goes missing, she decides to help out by finding it.

When Akimbo and his park ranger father unintentionally capture a lion cub near an African game park, Akimbo wants to keep the cub.

When she joins Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika on a trip to America, nine-year-old Harriet meets yet another relative--Aunt Formica, a cowgirl who is having trouble with some clever and mysterious cattle rustlers.

When her absent-minded inventor father suddenly remembers that he has five sisters, nine-year-old Harriet Bean, who has never heard of them before, determines to find her unknown aunts so that the unfinished family portrait can be completed.

In three separate stories, children help adults solve problems related to food, first by saving a restaurant from being shut down, second by untangling a mess in a spaghetti factory, and finally by selling donuts to raise funds for a stolen car.

When Akimbo and his park ranger father unintentionally capture a lion cub near an African game park, Akimbo wants to keep the cub.

On the African game preserve where his father works, Akimbo devises a dangerous plan to capture a ring of elephant poachers.

Harriet helps her detective aunts, Thessalonika and Japonica, investigate cheating at the racetrack by disguising herself as a jockey.