As a relationship and romance author, speaker, and coach I read a lot of books about dating, marriage, and romance. 2,002 Questions and Answers for Lovers is high on my list for the questions and middle of the road for the answers provided.

We each bring to our relationships an “Emotional Genealogy” that is created by all the relationships we have as we grow up. How did our families handle money, what were their values about work, did they spend alot of time focusing on the family or where they individuals living in the same house. What about fitness, and food, and fashion? What are the values of our friends and coworkers? Your answers to these questions and more create your unique point of view about how relationships are supposed to work.

The questions in this book give you a good starting point for understanding yourself and your mate. They can help you figure out how your perspective and values fit together to create ‘us’ instead of you and me. By developing a shared “Emotional Future” couples can build a strong foundation for a passionate, loving, and lifelong relationship.

The answers however just can’t, mostly because of space constraints, cover enough of the possible answers to be effective. Buy the book and ask each other the questions, answer your mate with your heart, and create the basis for a love affair for a lifetime.

Alexander McCall Smith’s profile could not be higher at the moment: the Today Show has featured him live twice, and author Amy Tan selected The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency as her book of the month. This delightful collection of short stories teems with more of the vivid characters and exotic settings that have become McCall Smith’s trademark. Among other places, we visit Portugal, Australia, and, of course, the southern Africa McCall Smith’s many fans know so well. Organized around the theme of the romantic encounter in all its varied forms, these hilarious stories are by turns surprising, enthralling, heartwarming, and, sometimes, just plain disastrous — but always universally recognizable. Full of the same irresistible imagination and delicious insight into the fascinating peculiarities of the human condition that have endeared The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency to thousands of readers, Heavenly Date is the perfect read for McCall Smith’s rapidly growing audience.