Her Prince Rode A White Horse

Wendy Cope has long been one of the nation's best-loved poets, with her sharp eye for human foibles and wry sense of humour. For the first time, Life, Love and the Archers brings together the best of her prose - recollections, reviews and essays from the light-hearted to the serious, taken from a lifetime of published and unpublished work, and all with Cope's lightness of touch. Here readers can meet the Enid-Blyton-obsessed schoolgirl, the ambivalent daughter, the amused teacher, the sensitive journalist, the cynical romantic and the sardonic television critic, as well as touching on books and writers who have informed a lifetime of reading and writing. Wendy Cope is a master of the one-liner as well as the couplet, the telling review as well as the sonnet, and Life, Love and the Archers gives us a wonderfully entertaining and unforgettable portrait of one of England's favourite writers.

In the early 17th century, Russia went through a foreign invasion and the nation's first civil war - a time so horrible that it acquired its own name in Russian history: "The Times of Troubles". Internal and external forces came together to create a storm of such magnitude that it threatened the very existence of the nation. The country lay in ruins and a foreign army occupied Moscow. For a while it seemed that Russia would never become an independent nation again, but the Russian people found enough strength and courage to stop the civil war and unite against foreign invaders. Two young people played a most important role in these events - a pretender to the Russian throne who called himself Tsarevich Dmitry, son of the late Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and Marina Mnishek, the girl with whom he fell in love while on the run from then Russian Tsar, Boris Godunov. Dmitry invaded Russia with a small band of adventurers and defeated Godunov. He and Marina were married and crowned in the Kremlin. Two weeks after their marriage, Dmitry was killed in a riot and Marina was exiled to the far North. But she escaped, and took part in a civil war herself. Twice she came to the walls of Moscow with an army and two different men by her side, fighting for her crown. This is a true story how a young man of uncertain ancestry and a young woman from a family of Polish nobility forced history to engrave their names into the list of Tsar's families of Russia. In their adventures, fights, travels, love stories, and turns of fate throwing them into the depths of despair and raising them to the heights of power and wealth, this couple lived more exciting lives than millions of other human beings put together.

Long before Politically Correct Bedtime Stories invaded bookstores, Americans were getting their giggles from Fractured Fairy Tales, those delightfully twisted parables brought to us between the cliffhanger adventures of our favorite cartoon heroes, Rocky & Bullwinkle. This collection, illustrated with classic art from the animated series includes the comical retelling of 25 classics such as Pinocchio (who starred in his own variety show "The Pinocchio Doody Show"), Jack and the Beanstalk (did you know that Jack grew a beanstalk in the outfield so he could catch fly balls for his baseball team?), or King Midas (who became a dentist so he could give his patients gold fillings). This satirical humor loved for so long by so many, is a must-have for fans of the show and anyone who loves classic fairy tales--with a twist.

What happens to a young adventurer when he does not believe in the mystical powers that aid him? Prince Tomlin, the hero of The Flight of the White Horse, makes the painful decision to run away from his father, King Terel, when he learns that his true love, the Lady Vera, has been entrapped in a magical necklace by the villainous Lord Harra. During his quest to rescue Vera, Tomlin resists the sorcerous wiles of the Lady Sharamar and battles storms, thieves, madness, and magic before his final confrontation with Harra. If he hopes to resist Harras magic and rescue Vera, he must fulfill the prophecies of his countrys mythological hero, the White Prince. But as long as Tomlin refuses to believe, the White Prince will not endow him with the centuries-old powers he needs.

As a reader, I have been reading for seven or eight years, but as an author, it is a newcomer who broke the arrow. Like many new authors with dreams, I entered the strange field of net writing with a full of enthusiasm