At long last -- the ninth and final volume of the Bandy Papers, Stalin Versus Me, in which quintessential Canadian hero Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy has one final fling with death, despair, and destruction, in the final year of the Second World War. In the aftermath of the Normandy invasion, Bandy continues to bob through the ranks like a cork at sea, persecuted by one of his pilots and pursued by Gwinny, who just can't understand why her attempt to have him convicted of treason has soured their relationship. Love rears its (elegant, Belgian) head again, the King needs a man of tact and discretion for a delicate post-war job in Germany, and there's an embarrassing parcel of ladies undies to explain, not to mention just why a half-clothed Bandy (unfortunately, not the right half) is in bed with George Garanine, that lazy, loveable, failed Bandy-assassin. From Normandy to Brussels to Yalta to Moscow, Bandy's career path is as labyrinthine as ever, strewn with bottles, battles, and brasshat blood-pressure. Of most crucial concern to our hero, as 1944 draws to a close and 1945 sees the last grim push of the war beginning -- boozing pal Philby of the SIS couldn't possibly have any reason to get Bandy sent to the Yalta Conference except as a translator, right? And Stalin can't really be out to get Bandy, just because he happens to know that a certain Soviet leader was once a Tsarist agent provocateur. After all, we all know Uncle Joe isn't the type to hold a grudge. Will Bandy survive? Will he get the, er, mature, middle-aged lady (unaccountably still in love with her lazy, loveable, long-lost husband?) Will a plane be purloined? Will his last few hairs hold out?

From the creator of the cult-classic Captain Star TV cartoon series: the first collection of comic strips tracing the strange but illustrious career of Captain Jim Star - the greatest hero any world has ever known - from its surreal beginnings to its improbable middle. Witness his triumphs, learn from his words of wisdom, and meet his crew on the Boiling Hell, Navigator Black, Officer Scarlette, and Atomic Engine Stoker Limbs Jones. Steven Appleby is also the creator of the comic strip and film series Small Birds Singing, and the BBC radio series Normal Life. One of Britain's best loved cartoonists, his work has appeared in newspapers and magazines internationally, and he has written and illustrated numerous books.

Bandy is back It's 1940, and the intrepid air ace of WWI is eager to join the fight against Germany. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think Bandy is too old to be flying Spitfires, and should go quietly into retirement to polish his medals and knighthoods. Bandy, however, has other ideas, and uses his friends and/or enemies in high places to manoeuvre himself into the Battle of Britain. Between being mistaken for a Nazi spy, a communist, or a Chelsea pensioner, Bandy has as much trouble on the ground as he has in the air with the Luftwaffe, and when his son arrives on the scene, his troubles only get worse. This edition also includes Donald Jack's novelette Where Did Rafe Madison Go? Jack wrote the story just as the fate of the Avro Arrow jet fighter was still up in the air (the first test flight taking place in March '58, and the programme's termination coming only four months after the story was published). In Where Did Rafe Madison Go? Jack imagines a future delta-winged descendant of the Arrow, the CF-108, and takes us through the RCAF court martial that is trying to uncover the explanation for the plane's mysterious disappearance, an incident that even the pilot, Rafe Madison, doesn't understand.

Promoted from the rank of Acting Temporary Captain in a Royal Flying Corps training squadron to that of very temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Air Ministry, ace pilot Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy blots his copybook with an ill-considered speech, flies to Ireland by mistake, and is sent back to the chaos of the Western Front as a lieutenant with the 13th Bicycle Battalion (also known as Captain Craig and the Forty Thieves). Reclaimed by the newly-hatched RAF that had just been born on April Fools' Day, Bandy -- now a major -- survives Irish gun-runners, Bolshevik spies, and his honeymoon with only minor injuries and major embarrassment. That's Me in the Middle won Jack the second of his three Leacock Medals for Humour.

Did people really speak like Bertie Wooster? Who was the celebrated Maisie? What does a Jubilee watering trough look like? Where is Loose Chippings? What was Just Like Mother Makes? Where does the exile from home splendour dazzles in vain come from? What was a gazeka? Why was Bertie Wooster more to be pitied than censured? When did young men-about-town start saying What? How did Bosher Street get its name? While P.G. Wodehouse's way with words has long set a standard for literary humour, much in his writing puzzles the modern reader. Volume Two of A Wodehouse Handbook answers many of the questions that arise when reading Wodehouse - especially the constant flow of quotations and deliberate misquotations that he used so skilfully. These range from the Bible and the Greek and Latin writers he knew so well, through Geoffrey Chaucer to writers like Ogden Nash and Mickey Spillane. Often he incorporated them into his stories so cunningly that the reader sometimes does not recognise them as quotations at all. Wodehouse also made a point of being up to date. From his first book in 1902 to his last in 1975, there are topical jokes, catchphrases, advertisements of the time and extracts from popular songs which everyone recognised when the books were published. In this volume, Norman Murphy explains the many references to people, places, and events that were appreciated by contemporary readers but are often mystifying today. He also identifies for us the myriad quotations that abound in Wodehouse's books and the songs, advertisements and long-forgotten catchphrases that Wodehouse used over seventy-five years. His findings, covering an extraordinary range of language and usage, from Aristotle to Variety magazine, will be of interest to all book-lovers and add to their appreciation and enjoyment of Wodehouse's superb writing.

It's 1918, and Bandy has survived the trenches and the war in the air, but now that he has his own squadron to command there are even worse things in store for him. His adjutant. A parachute test. A Paris dentist. The wrath of Brigadier Soames. Halifax hospitality... And when a new German biplane comes along that can out-perform even the Dolphin, it looks like it's the end of the war for Bandy.

In 1981, Norman Murphy caused a minor stir in literary circles when he published In Search of Blandings, which demonstrated that many of P.G. Wodehouse's legendary characters and settings were based on fact. In the two volumes of A Wodehouse Handbook, he reveals his findings across a wider field - the world that Wodehouse lived in and the sources of the many quotations and references Wodehouse used so brilliantly. In Volume 1, he tells us of Winston Churchill's first public speech; of Sam Goldwyn's typhoon that outdid Nature; how Clement Atlee made his first social protest; how the Gibson Girls kept England in suspense; of the longest golf hole ever played; and of the lady who flew the Atlantic without a map. We learn that immersion in the swimming pool (with all your clothes on) was not uncommon in a certain London club and that the home of Jeeves's Junior Ganymede is still to be found in Mayfair. The recipe for Green Swizzles is revealed at last - and a distant Wodehouse relation has provided an astonishing origin for the fabled Buck-U-Uppo. Based on more than twenty years of searching though biographies, memoirs, obituaries and newspaper reports, Norman Murphy's discoveries encompass English and American social history from the Victorian era to the space race. He demonstrates conclusively that the world P.G. Wodehouse described was real enough. What Wodehouse did was to show the funny side of it.

It's 1924, and Bandy is making a solo flight across the Atlantic in the Gander, a seaplane of his own design. Not for fame though - he's fleeing from arrest for train robbery, from his job as Minister of Defence, and from his would-be assassin and friend George Garanine. From Iceland, to Iraq, to St. Pancreas Hospital in London, Bandy's career has never been more complicated, or his luck more of a roller coaster. When he finds new employment as Deputy Supreme Being of a mercenary air force, Bandy begins to feel that the whole British Empire has a grudge against him. But at least the pay is good.

A collection of nine steampunk stories drawn from the archives of the Etheric Explorers Club, a Victorian society dedicated to exploring the mysteries of the etheric realm... The visions of a Russian painter in fin-de-si cle Paris... a terrible weapon that almost no-one has survived... a confession within a confession... a crime from antiquity resurfacing -beneath- the Thames... a desperate search for a lost sister... a contemporary horror entwined with an ancient manuscript... an experiment gone wrong... a lost world which should have remained lost... and a night of dining, death, and romance.

In August of 1913, a young University of New Brunswick graduate set out for Germany to study music at the renowned Royal Leipzig Conservatory. Helen VanWart was a vivacious, optimistic girl, eager to experience all that Europe had to offer. Her weekly letters home to her family paint a portrait of Europe's last months of peace, a time that, for Helen, passed all too quickly in classes, lessons, and practice, practice, practice, interspersed with many concerts, operas, and trips to such places as Dresden, Switzerland, and Rome. Despite her daily hours of practice - often five or six - she kept up an active social life, and her letters bring to life her fellow-students and boarders in her Pension, and perhaps most significantly, Mr. Lochhead, a Canadian chemistry student about whom she is unaccustomedly reticent The future Mrs. Lochhead, indeed, was so immersed in her music and her friends that politics rarely impinged upon her letters. As with so many others in Europe and the British Empire, the outbreak of war appears to have taken her utterly by surprise. Helen's letters are living social history, a vibrant testament of a time now hard to imagine, the last year of Edwardian innocence, and a portrait of a world that, both musically and socially, had nothing backward-looking about it. The future lay ahead and it was going to be golden.

Now fans need no longer wait for the CBC to re-run recordings of Max Ferguson's notorious radio shows (assuming that the tapes have not all been destroyed by court order). A full dose of his lunacy, depravity, and flagrant disregard for management can now be enjoyed at any hour of the day or night simply by reading a copy of And Now... Here's Max, his scandalous memoir of a life in broadcasting at the CBC. This edition includes a new foreword by Shelagh Rogers. Max Ferguson's 52 years as an announcer on CBC television and radio included such programmes as After Breakfast Breakdown, The Max Ferguson Show, Tabloid, Gazette, Inside From The Outside, 55 North Maple, and Telescope, and earned him many honours: the Order of Canada, the Governor-General's Performing Arts Award, the John Drainie Award, the Gordon Sinclair Award, the Stephen Leacock Award (for And Now...Here's Max), three ACTRA awards, and honorary degrees from Dalhousie University, Brock, Waterloo, Western Ontario, and the University of Saskatchewan.

Back home in Gallop to set up an aircraft company, Bandy finds himself having to get involved in all sorts of unsavoury business, from rum-running to running for Parliament, before he finally finds himself running from the law...

A collection for adults and older teens, The Storyteller and Other Tales will take you on a journey through exotic worlds and times. Demon bears take human shape and devils walk in the north of a world where every hill hosts a god and every river and spring a goddess. Ulfleif, a warrior-princess who would rather carry a lyre than a sword, is drawn into an unfinished tale by the storyteller Moth, and old lays of vengeance and betrayal wake into bloody new life around her. A slave in Bronze-Age Korthan sees his lovers suffer and die for the crime of worshipping outlawed gods and in the midst of horror at their sin, finds his own faith shaken and takes his own first steps on the road to rebellion. In a tale built on the familiar legends of our world, Merlin's daughter relates the story of the fall of Arthur's Britain as you have never heard it, a tale of adultery and treachery old and well-known, yet fresh and startling in Nimiane's telling. The unnamed common men of England who faced a later generation of sea-raiders are given voice once more in the historical tale of the Battle of Maldon, when English fought Vikings at the Blackwater and lost. In all these tales, the common thread is otherness; other worlds, other times, other ways of looking at heroism and tragedy, faith and betrayal and victory. Build the fire up, shut out the dark, and let The Storyteller carry you away.

Beaches. Sunny walks in the country. A touch of romance. What could be more peaceful than a summer holiday in the Maritimes in 1887? A battlefield, maybe? That's what Elliott Graven and Paisley DeLoup think after a few days of bombs, assassination attempts, and political campaigning. And then there was the vegetarianism... When a project hosted by Alexander Graham Bell threatens to provoke an international crisis that could embroil them all in a real war, Elliott and Paisley begin to wish they'd chosen the Great Lakes instead of Baddeck for their holidays. This kind of thing never happened in Kingston... Submarines. Spoons. Werebeasties. It would make for interesting reading in their letters home, at any rate. Though, on second thoughts, best not to. It would only worry their parents.

Fantasy has become an increasingly popular genre of children's literature in recent years; Quests and Kingdoms provides a basis from which an adult unfamiliar with the genre of children's fantasy literature may explore it. Quests is an historical survey for the interested general reader, which will be of great practical value to library and education professionals as well. Though the aim is to give adults concerned with bringing children (or teens) and books together a familiarity with the children's fantasy genre and its history, for those who already know and love the classics of children's fantasy Quests will be an introduction to works and authors they may have missed. Taking a chronological approach, Quests begins with the fairy-tale collections of d'Aulnoy, Perrault, and the Grimms and works its way up to the novels of J.K. Rowling and Garth Nix, covering over three centuries of fantasy read by children. The lives of 95 authors are looked at and placed in historical context, while their works are introduced through both synopses and analysis. Quests also includes chapters on Tolkien, retellings of traditional stories, and King Arthur and Robin Hood. More than 500 works are discussed, and the thorough index makes the book a practical reference resource as well as a history and an introduction to the best in the genre. K.V. Johansen has Master's Degrees in Medieval Studies (Toronto) and English (McMaster). The author of a number of children's books, she held the 2001 Eileen Wallace Research Fellowship in Children's Literature from the Eileen Wallace Collection at the University of New Brunswick. She also received the 2004 Frances E. Russell Award for research in children's literature from the Canadian section of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People. 'Here is a magical thing, a reference book with a heart and soul. Brimming over with ideas, as well as facts and figures, the writing is elegant and the author's enthusiasm contagious. Here, too, a noble defence of fantasy and its literary value.' -O.R. Melling 'Johansen brings a scholar's erudition and a child's delight to the field of children's fantasy. Her thoughtful survey elevates fantasy from guilty pleasure to moral education, and reveals it to be not a recent marketing-driven fad, but an ancient and unbreakable strand of human creativity. If you know nothing about the genre, this book will turn you into an aficionado; if you think you've read everything, you'll find new gems here, and old ones glowing with a new light. For teachers, parents, anyone who wants to uncover the wonder of reading, Quests and Kingdoms is a pirate's treasure map.' -Tristanne J. Connolly, St. Jerome's University

It's 1925, and Bandy has finally found a secure post-war job: commander of the Maharajah of Jhamjarh's new air force. The only problem is, the British Raj is not so happy with him for setting up a rival air power inside British India. Between the impractical Maharajah, the British viceroy, and the Great Game being played by the neighbouring state of Khaliwar, Bandy has his hands full trying to keep his employer -- and himself -- out of deadly danger.

The Great War may be finished, but Bartholomew Bandy isn't. After not quite succeeding in defeating communism in Russia, he's returning to the New World when he meets shy, awkward Cissie Chaffington, whose first glimmerings of interest in aviation appear when she sends a cooked duck soaring through the ship's first-class dining room. More than just terminal embarrassment stands in the way of their happiness, however. Her father, for example, takes a violent dislike to Bandy - even before Bandy blows up Cyril Chaffington's hotel. And then who should turn up but the diminutive Dasha, the former Bolshevik (sort of) nurse whom Bandy married (sort of) in Russia, where she betrayed him (more or less) to the mercy (or lack thereof) of the Red Cavalry. Between sorting all of this out, carrying airmail, and trying to start his own aviation business while dodging flappers and bootleggers, Bandy hardly has time to be a silent movie star... This edition includes Banner's Headline, a radio play by Donald Jack published here for the first time. In it we discover what happens when Arthur Banner, a rocket scientist, gets passed over for promotion one too many times, and decides to resign to work on a project of his own.

Love, death, music, and persistent depressive disorder...

Millennial artists navigate the ever-present past that shapes and drives them, searching for a road they can travel into a future together.

With his thirties looming, failed botanist Lindsey Quinlan finds himself unemployed and facing up to the truth: he's been going nowhere all his adult life, and the simmering background depression he's fought for years is threatening to drown him and destroy the last and only good thing he has, his relationship with his boyfriend, aspiring rock star Thomas Smith Gorev. Even his dead brother Raleigh is nagging him to get help.

Guitarist Thomas Tank Gorev is ready for the bigtime, if his band can just find that one missing element to propel them beyond their indie cult status, but his partner's worsening mental state is a growing concern. He misplaced Lindsey moments after their very first kiss, and having found him again seven years later, isn't about to let him go so easily a second time, but is that going to mean putting his career and his bandmates' futures on hold to watch over a man sinking down into the dark?

Something is cutting off Spohrville's communication with the outside world. The phones don't work. There's no radio, no TV -- no internet. Are eco-terrorists trying to shut down the Mars Relay satellite? That's what the government says, but Jordan and Helen and the sentient virtual supercomputer Cassandra don't believe a word of it. The town is overrun with birdwatchers who can't tell a hawk from a heron. Jordan's old enemy, Harvey Number Two of the spy agency Bureau 6, is sneaking around pretending to be a cop on holiday. And archaeologist Uncle William has dug up a very strange black rock while excavating an Acadian settlement. With no land-lines to the site of the dig and wireless communication impossible, Jordan and Helen have no back-up from Cassandra. They've taken on corrupt government agents and industrial spies before, but they've always had Cassandra behind them. It's the twenty-first century. The bad guys have night-vision goggles and interference triangulators. How did Jordan and Helen get stuck with a bunch of musket-toting historical re-enactors as their only allies?

It's the future. Jordan O'Blenis may be a genius when it comes to computers, but with spies after his sister Cassie's research in UAVs and artificial intelli-gence, he needs all the help he can get to keep her safe and save BWB Aero-space's top secret drone project. Luckily for Jordan, he has Helen the frog expert and Cassandra, the sentient supercomputer programme he created, on his side. The problem is, Helen thinks kidnapping and interrogating a government agent is a perfectly logical solution to their problems, while Cassandra has developed a bad case of ethics. When old enemies snatch Jordan, though, it's up to Cassan-dra to save the day, even if that means hijacking BWB's multi-million dollar UAV system. It's just borrowing, really...