Book 7: "The Double Comfort Safari Club" by Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe herself smiled at the recollection. “I went in at the shallow end,” she said. “It was not very deep, and I found that I could stand. But then I made a very interesting discovery.”
“That you could swim?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, I did not find that I could swim. I found, though, that I could float. I very slowly took the weight off my legs, and do you know, Mma, I floated. It was very pleasant. I did not have to move my arms-I just floated.”
Mma Makutsi clapped her hands. “That is very good, Mma! Well done! Perhaps it is something to do with being so traditionally built. A thin person would sink. You floated.”
“Possibly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But it was good to discover that I could do a sport after all.”
Mma Makutsi was not certain that floating could be called a sport. Was there a Botswana floating team? She thought not. What would such a team do? Would they have to float gently from one point to another, with the winner being the one who arrived first? Surely not.

Mma Makutsi's fiancee Phuti ends up in hospital after being injured in an accident, and she is thwarted in her attempts to care for him by his over-protective aunt tries to keep her at arm's length. On the other hand, it was nice to see a very different part of Botswana when Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi travelled to a safari camp in the Okavango Delta in search of a beneficiary to a will. But overall this isn't one of my favourite books in this series.

Book 8: "The Mother-in-Law" by Eve Makis

If he weren't obsessed about Elvis, he'd be obsessing about something else. At last Elvis is a positive role model. I obsess about him myself sometimes, dressed in that black leather jumpsuit.
'Positive role model? Heavy drinker, pill-popper, philanderer?'
'We all have our foibles, Lydia. If Elvis drank stinky green tea and went to bed at eleven-thirty, do you think he would have been a rock and roll legend?'

Unfortunately I didn't really like this one, and if the author wasn't going to be doing an author talk at the BookCrossing Unconvention this year, I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it.

Electra, the daughter-in-law, is a warm and vibrant woman, and a night-owl who uses eleven-thirty as an example of an early bedtime, but I didn't really warm to her, her husband Adam, or their family and friends, or care about their problems. Electra'a best friend Lydia, with her inadequate mothering style and bratty son, was especially annoying.

Reviews of Books 7 and 8 cross-posted to 50bookchallenge.