In an attempt to win the hand of Princess Gloria in marriage, Sir Terry slays a dragon-only to discover he's killed the dragon in a neighboring kingdom and inadvertently earned the devotion of the wrong princess. And everyone knows that getting stuck with the wrong girl is truly a fate worse than dragons.

A wonderful author "reminiscent of Robert Asprin" (The Midwest Book Review) unleashes the next of his terrifically clever takes on fairy tale clich"There's magic in a kiss," the young sorceress Emily tells Caroline. But the beautiful Caroline knows that already, for kissing an enchanted frog has earned her the right to marry a handsome Prince. There is one catch—Prince Hal is far from good-looking. So both girls set off for the city of Melinower, where princes abound, hoping to trade Hal up for a handsomer model.But the pair soon learn that it's easier to find your prince than to marry him, and before long they're tangled in a plot involving a mysterious dwarf, a magic sword, a kidnapped bride, a Dark Tower—and the unhandsome Hal has plans of his own for our two heroines.

Following on from Portrait of Elmbury, the second in the series shows an England which now seems almost foreign in its remoteness. Evoked with an unerringly accurate eye, Brensham Village contains a mixture of action and character, conveying the life of a country community in the halcyon period between the wars. Sentimental it is, but not so as to undermine the picture of a time when a life of landed gentry, squalid poverty and routine village intimacy co-existed within a familiar seasonal routine.

This is the first book of the famous trilogy of English country life, The Brensham Trilogy, by John Moore. A wonderful and exuberant chronicle of an English market town between the wars, distinguished with a historic abbey, a winding river and bustling pubs with a cast of characters that could have stepped out of Hogarth or Shakespeare...

A Country town thrown into chaos and defiance by a summer flood that threatens the festival pageant; a quarrel of hot young blood over the charms of rival beauty queens, a fishing competition with a compassionate embezzler's fortune at stake; a real battle between York and Lancaster with the wrong side winning; a female Communist redhead, a teetotal publican, an insufferable baronet, a mountainous American ex-soldier; and a lot of other characters who are only life-size-here is indeed the right material for a novel by John Moore. He has not failed to make good use of it. His robust pen races round his beloved countryside, bringing the multiple strands of its life to the coherent pattern of the novel. Very many readers of Portrait of Elmbury, Brensham Village and The Blue Field have come to love John Moore's vision of England. All the ingredients of hurly-burly and hotchpotch, generosity and luxuriance, homeliness, character, comedy, country and a sense of the...

Old friends and new faces join the scholars, rogues and countrymen of Brensham with its crooked village street and crooked church spire. Among its rare individuals who share an obstinacy for making life a romantic andhilarious adventure are those lively landgirls, The Frolick Virgins, Dai, the hymn-singing postman, and William Hart who claimed to be descended from William Shakespeare and loved Pheemy, the young gypsy, not wisely but too well.