Late one night Jim Qwilleran is disturbed by the shrill ringing of the telephone. His erstwhile landlady Iris Cobb now resident manager of the Goodwinter Farm Museum is distraught. Knowing her frail state of health Qwill is concerned & becomes even more so when a piercing scream severs their connection. Arriving at the museum he finds Iris slumped on the kitchen floor. But what at first looks like a natural demise from heart disease proves to be much more sinister. Once more the detective talents of Koko & Yum Yum Qwills sleuthing Siamese companions are in demand in Pickax City. ...

Suzy is a little French cat with a beautiful stripy coat & long white whiskers. Suzy likes living in France chasing butterflies & being stroked the wrong way. Suzy doesnt like: straying far from home. One day she finds a cosy little basket clambers in & falls asleep. When she wakes she discovers she is actually in the basket of a hot air balloon which has taken her all the way to Engl&. How is she ever going to find her way back home...? ...

The good people of Pickax are agog with anticipation. Not only is the new bookstore The Pirates Chest about to open but the Theatre Club is set to perform Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest. The play does not continue past opening night however for a member of the cast is killed in a car accident...or was it an accident? Koko seems to suspect otherwise & Qwill & his clever cats have their work cut out for them. ...

Jim Qwilleran & his sleuthing Siamese companions Koko & Yum Yum up sticks from their converted apple-barn home for the snowy winter months & move into the old Gage mansion. The house belongs to Junior Goodwinters grandma Euphonia & is full of commonplace treasures hidden in dusty closets
- a curious cats heaven. Everything goes well until the phone rings announcing that Euphonia has been found dead at her new Florida home. The strange thing is that the apparently happy & healthy 88-year-old seems to have committed suicide.
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This wonderfully compulsive game is played all over the world from the playgrounds of Europe & North America to Alaska where the Inuit traditionally play the game using loops of sealskin. Now you can thread together al the cats cradle games you will ever need. Each figure is shown in easy-to-follow illustrated steps & include the fascinating story of its origins. Intriguing engaging & addictive this is the modern guide to the traditional game. ...

Elaine Risley a painter returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood
- unbearable betrayals
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Told with deadpan humour & bitter irony Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon & worse still surviving it.. . Dr Felix Hoenikker one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of 'ice-nine' a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last fatal gift to mankind brings about the end that for all of us is nigh... ...

What had there been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never imagine the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea'. In the early 1950s an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner in Colombo bound for Engl&. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table'
- as far from the Captain's table as can be
- with a ragtag group of adults & two other boys Cassius & Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean the boys tumble from one adventure to another & at night they spy on a shackled prisoner
- his crime & fate a mystery that will haunt them forever...


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Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin & is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition such a claim to blessedness has serious consequences especially when Catalina seems more inclined to obey her heart than the demands of the Church. The last of Maugham's novels Catalina is a romantic celebration of Spain & a delightfully mischievous satire on absolutism. ...

John French first took up flying in 1937 with the University of London Air Squadron & this move was to signal the start of a long & varied career in flight which would see him involved in some of the most iconic wartime exploits of the Twentieth Century. Posted to Gibraltar in the midst of war he flew sorties in support of the North African landings during Operation Torch a particularly interesting episode in Second World War history. From here he was to work on the iconic Catalina
- the spectacular water plane employed to such great effect in an array of military operations in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. His exploits are relayed in vivid first hand detail offering fresh insights into this period of history from a man engaged at the heart of the action. Post war exploits flow into accounts of wartime engagement & there is space too in which to detail Johns post-war career behind the Iron Curtain. Diary entries edited & complied by his grandson Anthony Holt have been lovingly woven together to create a complete narrative which spans a career of such wide spanning variety & achievement to make it perfect material for a book such as this.
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