Karen Wallace is an award-winning author of children's books. Her first novel for older readers, Raspberries on the Yangtze (Simon & Schuster) was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. The first in her series for younger readers, The Crunchbone Castle Chronicles, published by A&C Black, was selected for the Summer Reading Challenge in 2006. The Goosepimple Bay Sagas was a World Book Day recommended read in 2008 and Li Fu's Great Aim was chosen for the recent Boys into Books promotion.

Gusty Ox is not your typical princess. She's more interested in wrestling crocodiles and hunting dragons than in tiaras and princes. That is, until she looks into Crackel's magic mirror and decides things have got to change. But it isn't easy being a proper princess and things only get worse when her rival, Princess Lulu the Luscious, comes to stay. This is the third riotous romp in The Crunchbone Castle Chronicles.