Fairy tales were never this tough. Men in Tights never looked so good. At least that’s Pepper Marsh’s first impression when she attends the International Jousting Competition at London, Ontario’s Renaissance Faire. An unemployed and unattached software engineer, Pepper has had enough of the computer geeks in her dating pool. She yearns for a man of yore. A man not afraid to stare death in the face and laugh at it. A man with a big lance…. Pepper’s cousin promised to find her a knight in shining armor, on the condition that Pepper walk around in wench get-up. With her mind on her embarrassingly revealing bustier, Pepper promptly steps into the path of an oncoming steed…and is rescued by sexy Englishman Walker McPhail. Once the wild man of jousting, Walker has let a brush with death keep him out of the ring. Though his emotions are clad in an almost impenetrable armor, Pepper finds Walker infuriatingly sexy—and is about to go medieval on his heart…

Private eye John Taylor has a supernatural gift for finding things - but when the legendary sword Excalibur finds him instead, he really wishes it hadn't . . . Most people would be happy to receive the legendary sword Excalibur in the mail one day, but private eye John Taylor knows better. The weapon is extremely powerful, but it is also extremely dangerous and - of course - a portent of perilous times to come. If he's going to find out more about the sword, and why he's been chosen to wield it, Taylor must find and investigate the Last Defenders of Camelot. And to do that, he's going to have to leave the Nightside, a place where your dreams can come true-as long as your nightmares don't get you first - to visit a place he fears far more. London Proper. A Hard Day's Knight is the eleventh title in Simon R. Green's New York Times bestselling Nightside series

BOOK ONE: HARD DAY'S KNIGHT Children are missing. The police are stumped. Halloween is coming, and an ancient evil is on the horizon. The vampires are the good guys. This is not your ordinary fall weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina. Vampire private detectives Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood have been hired to save a client from being cursed for all eternity, but end up in a bigger mess than they ever imagined. Suddenly trapped in the middle of a serial kidnapping case, Jimmy and Greg uncover a plot to bring forth an ancient evil. Soon, they've enlisted the help of a police detective, a priest, a witch, a fallen angel and a strip club proprietor to save the world. This unlikely band of heroes battles zombies, witches, neuroses and sunburn while cracking jokes and looking for the perfect bag of O-negative.

In the aftermath of a tragedy that leaves him with permanent scars, Sir Aurion of the Knight's Brigade is about to go for an early retirement. He believes his diminished strength means he cannot be the capable second-in-command the Knights deserve. But before he can put down his sword for good, he yearns to try and prove himself as a capable warrior to his captain, Sir Diroze. Aurion has been dueling against Diroze for over a decade, and has never won a single match. Which isn't too surprising to the rest of the Knights -- Diroze has more than earned his title as captain, and has never been defeated by anyone. With this final attempt being his very last chance, will Aurion pull off a victory against the odds? Or will his captain, a man who may have an agenda of his own, be the one to strike Aurion down for good?

Stranded in England without money or a ticket home, Mercy Starling takes a job working for a medieval reenactment company. After all, who wouldn’t want to pretend to live in the past, wield swords and longbows, and dress up in armor? And the best part of her summer job is Bestwood Hall…or rather, its intriguing new owner. Painfully shy Alden Ainslie is overwhelmed by the medieval reenactors who invade the Tudor house he’s renovating, but he’s drawn to the bubbly Mercy. And he valiantly joins in the fun, dodging not jsut arrows, lances, and the odd sword thrust, but also some pretty suspicious–and potentially deadly — attacks on himself. Someone wants him to give up on the house. But Alden is desperate to prove himself–and win the heart of his lady fair…

The focus on neomedievalism at the 2007 International Conference on Medievalism, in ever more sessions at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, and by many recent or forthcoming publications, has left little doubt that this important new area of study is here to stay, and that medievalism must come to terms with it. In response to an essay in Studies in Medievalism XVIII defining medievalism in relationship to neomedievalism, this volume therefore begins with seven essays defining neomedievalism in relationship to medievalism. --

Hollywood Knights examines Hollywood Arthuriana as political nostalgia offered to American viewers during times of cultural crisis: the red scare of the 1950s, the breakdown of traditional authority in the 1960s and 1970s, the turn to the right in the 1980s and the redemption of masculine and national authority in the 1990s. Its analysis of these films explores their proposal of an ideal past - an Americanized Camelot and a democratized chivalry - as the solution to the problems of a troubled present, a solution that will ensure prosperity in the homeland and a globally beneficial American authority abroad.