With the return of Chaucer Jeffries and his fellow students from their Egyptian captivity in "Chaucer on the Nile," the University of Bologna of Ohio-'Baloney U' to alumni and all who love her-moves to the foreground in this second volume of the UBO trilogy. In "Gloriana at Baloney U," Bonnie Boatwright, the university's successful president is planning to retire soon and schemes to have her former colleague and best friend Mimi Patterson return to UBO as chief academic officer, thereby gaining the inside track to the presidency that will soon be vacant. After sacking her current chief academic officer and stacking the search committee that will pick his replacement, Bonnie is well into her game of gulling faculty fools and wielding administrative knaves when she discovers that Sam Foy, the chairman of the university's board of trustees, is plotting with a major donor to replace her with his own presidential candidate, Crystal Mcleod-an attractive and personable blind poet who has her own agenda for UBO. Despite failing health, Bonnie struggles to preserve her 'dream succession', along with her own version of institutional integrity, culminating in a power struggle with Sam, and an attempted coup that roils the last board meeting of the school year and renders the spring graduation ceremony tragic-or hilarious-for most of its participants.