Horse Racing: books tagged “Horse Racing” @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9781568955254 (1-56895-525-1, 1568955251)

by Dick Francis

ISBN 1568955251 (1-56895-525-1)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Book summary:

One of the most impressive aspects of Dick Francis's long and celebrated career (he's won three Edgar Awards, the Silver Dagger, the Gold Dagger, a Cartier Diamond Dagger, and was named the 1996 Mystery Writers of America Grand Master) is the freshness that he brings to each of his novels. Though every one of his 30-plus works of fiction has drawn from some aspect of the world of horses, Francis turns this constraint into a powerful source of inspiration. In 10 Lb. Penalty Francis adds several new arrows to his quiver. His protagonist, Ben Juliard, narrates the tale in a vivid first person that begins in his insecure late teens instead of the settled middle age of the usual Francis hero. Also, Ben's relationship with horses is more of a fading dream than an active reality. The book begins with Ben's expulsion from Vivian Durridge's stables; he's removed with a false accusation of glue sniffing. But as Ben soon discovers, it is, in fact, his powerful father's machinations that are behind his ill fortunes. The elder Juliard is "standing for Parliament," and the bachelor candidate needs his son by his side for a year of campaigning if he hopes to win. Ben accedes to his father's wishes. He almost always has, but he soon finds that his "gap year"--his year before entering college--is going to be a nightmare. Orinda Nagle, the widow of the recently deceased Hoopwestern MP, and her companion, Alderney Wyvern, resist George's campaign from the start. Then, Usher Rudd, a muckraking journalist, turns his vitriol to George. When an attempt is made on George's life, he and his son find themselves inside a vigorous tale of suspense that takes several narrative years to sort out.

Francis's lucid prose is the driving force in this political mystery, and the realistic rendering of the complicated father-son relationship between George and Ben adds a sophistication and weight that marks the author's best fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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ISBN 9780449211991 (0-449-21199-1, 0449211991)

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Banker

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0449211991 (0-449-21199-1)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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It is difficult to say where disaster begins, to point towards one particular happening as the first definite step towards distant cataclysm. Looking back, Tim Ekaterin sees the beginning as the day his boss stepped into a fountain. Onwards from there, he comes across people and events as yet unconnected but which, when woven together by time and chance, leads towards violent explosive action and the threat of death. Set in the worlds of thoroughbred racing and merchant banking, the story covers a span of three years, growing from quiet harmless-seeming seeds to a wholly horrific harvest. [via]

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ISBN 9780425202883 (0-425-20288-7, 0425202887)

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Bolt

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425202887 (0-425-20288-7)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Book summary:

The hero of Francis' bestselling Break-In now gets involved in finding a cruel killer of horses, loses the women he loves to an aristocrat, and is menaced by an aspiring arms merchant. 2 cassettes. [via]

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Bone Crack

by Francis Dick

ISBN 0671680765 (0-671-68076-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Bone Crack: ISBN 0671680765 (0-671-68076-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

ISBN 9780330234474 (0-330-23447-1, 0330234471)

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Bonecrack

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0330234471 (0-330-23447-1)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd

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Two ruthless men erupt one freezing February night into the orderly life of Neil Griffon and roughly abduct him. When he is set free within hours, he is the victim of vicious threats, of a weird form of extortion and of a nerve-racking war of attrition. [via]

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Break In

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425199932 (0-425-19993-2)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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"Francis is at the top of his form...If you don't like BREAK IN I don't understand you."
LARRY KING
USA TODAY
Blood ties can mean trouble, as Kit Fielding, sporting hero is about to find out. His close, even telepathic kinship with his twin sister Holly draws him into a crusade to save her marriage from ruinous scandal. But his intercession, both on and off the track, proves more costly than he'd imagined, thrusting him into a deadly contest of wit and will with a ruthless media czar, a black-hearted robber baron, and an unexpectedly violent adversary far too close to home for comfort. [via]

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Come to Grief

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0330347772 (0-330-34777-2)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd

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A stunning successor to Whip Hand, starring ex-champion-jockey-turned-investigator Sid Halley. Having exposed an adored racing figure as a monster, Sid must testify at the man's trial. But, on the morning of his appearance, a tragic suicide shatters the proceedings and jars Sid's conscience, leading him to believe that there's more to the death than has yet come to light. [via]

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ISBN 9780449219560 (0-449-21956-9, 0449219569)

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Comeback

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0449219569 (0-449-21956-9)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Peter Darwin was hoping for some quiet leave from the Foreign Office. Instead he found himself in the village of his childhood - at the service of a veterinary surgeon whose operating theatre was rapidly acquiring an unwanted reputation as an abattoir. The sudden unexplained death of a string of valuable racehorses from one small area in Gloucestershire was a mystery the police couldn't solve. But Darwin was local. He remembered the people and what was at stake... And now he know enough to get himself killed... [via]

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ISBN 9780330335683 (0-330-33568-5, 0330335685)

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Decider

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0330335685 (0-330-33568-5)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd

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Architect Lee Morris has plans to restore Stratton Park racecourse to its former grandeur. But the combative Stratton heirs have violent plans of their own.

[via]

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ISBN 9780449221396 (0-449-22139-3, 0449221393)

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Driving Force

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0449221393 (0-449-22139-3)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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When a hitchhiker picked up by one of his drivers is later found murdered, ex-jockey Freddie Croft, the owner of a profitable fleet of horse vans, is drawn into the mystery. By the author of Comeback. 275,000 first printing. $175,000 ad/promo. [via]

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The Edge

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425204391 (0-425-20439-1)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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"A tour de force...A steadily high level of interest, comedy, suspense, and surprise." THE ATLANTIC The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race is not only a glittering rail junket that promises the oportunity to race a thoroughbred on some of the world's great courses, but is something more: an intriguing mystery will be enacted on board, which passengers will be invited to solve. But included on the guest list is one Julius Apollo Filmer, justifiably reputed to be the most ruthless operator lurking in the racing underworld, and he's planning a strange plot of his own. For Tor Kelsey, undercover security agent for the British Jockey Club, a scenario of imaginary mayhem is about to explode into a nightmare of real and bloody murder. [via]

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ISBN 9780425194997 (0-425-19499-X, 042519499X)

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Field of Thirteen

by Dick Francis

ISBN 042519499X (0-425-19499-X)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Book summary:

This first collection of short stories by Dick Francis (author of 10 Lb. Penalty and more than 30 other horseracing mysteries) pulls together five new tales with eight that have appeared scattered in periodicals over the last three decades. One of the pleasures of his stories is witnessing the breadth and variety within Francis's racetrack milieu. In "Dead on Red," a jealous jockey named Davey Rockman hires Emil Jacques, a French assassin and gun collector, to kill the famed rider who stole his job; but Rockman is haunted by his deed much in the same way as is the protagonist in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." "Raid at Kingdom Hill" tells of Tricksy Wilcox's scheme for a not-so-bright bomb scare, a plan that still might yield the payoff of a lifetime. "Collision Course" is free of murder but frames a delightful conflict between an out-of-work newspaperman and a bounder whose faux manners threaten to bring him down at the peak of his racing syndicate career. The Kentucky Derby story, "The Gift," follows Fred Collyer, a drunken writer who overhears plans for a major racing swindle and struggles against alcohol to publish the story by his deadline. And the collection ends with a what-if story called "Haig's Death" that examines the consequences of the sudden passing of Christopher Haig, an animal feed consultant and race-meeting judge.

Poe, who most historians of literature credit as the creator of the short story, declared that a good short story should have nothing extraneous. Francis's stories, for the most part, obey Poe's dictum. Each character and description fits tightly into an unfolding plan so that the mystery or twist is revealed with a satisfying economy of words. While Field of 13 will appeal to Francis loyalists, newcomers, too, will find much to relish in the short fiction of this mystery grand master. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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For Kicks

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425194981 (0-425-19498-1)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Australian horse breeder Daniel Roke had resisted the exorbitant sum of money offered by a suave Englishman to investigate a scandal involving drugged racehorses. But after another investigator dies mysteriously, Roke agrees to fill his shoes--and learns that men who would give drugs to horses are capable of doing much worse to human beings.

[via]

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In the Frame

by Dick Francis

ISBN 042520958X (0-425-20958-X)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Arriving to spend the weekend with his cousin Donald, artist Charles Todd steps into a terrifying scenario. Donald's wife Regina has been brutally murdered and the house ransacked. Among the missing valuables is a painting by Sir Alfred Munnings. [via]

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Longshot

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0399135812 (0-399-13581-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Book summary:

"Fast-paced, meticulously plotted...Nobody sets up a mystery better than Dick Francis."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Travel writer John Kendall didn't think he was doing anything too out of the ordinary when he tramped off to rural England for an interview with a successful race horse trainer. Soon enough, however, Kendall realizes that completing the book will be tricky at best. In fact, the perils described in his survival manuals pale next to the dangers in rural England....
Selected by the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, and Doubleday Book Club [via]

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Proof

by Dick Francis

ISBN 042520393X (0-425-20393-X)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Reflex

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425206955 (0-425-20695-5)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Book summary:

"As rousing and straightforward as a stretch drive to the wire." NEWSWEEK Dick Francis is no ordinary mystery writer, and jockey Philip Nore is no ordinary hero. When Nore begins to suspect that a track photographer's fatal accident was really murder, he sets out to discover the truth and to trap the killer. Slowly, he unravels some nasty secrets of corruption, blackmail and murder--and unwittingly sets himself up as the killer's next target. "A burst with action." THE LOST ANGELES TIMES [via]

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ISBN 9780613647878 (0-613-64787-4, 0613647874)

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Seabiscuit: Library Edition

by Laura Hillenbrand

ISBN 0613647874 (0-613-64787-4)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:

He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.

Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.

Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]

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Seabiscuit: Library Edition: ISBN 0613647874 (0-613-64787-4)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

ISBN 9781400060986 (1-4000-6098-2, 1400060982)

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Seabiscuit: An American Legend

by Laura Hillenbrand

ISBN 1400060982 (1-4000-6098-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Book summary:

He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.

Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.

Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]

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ISBN 9780425201480 (0-425-20148-1, 0425201481)

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Shattered

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425201481 (0-425-20148-1)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Book summary:

After 41 novels, most writers run out of energy before the final gallop. But Dick Francis's latest thriller is as good as his earliest. Perhaps it's because this one is dedicated to the Queen Mother, who celebrated her centennial in 2000, and who, like her famously horsey daughter, shares Francis's passion for the races. Or maybe he's just found his stride again, after a few less-than-outstanding starts. Here he does one of his best tricks: lures you into a somewhat arcane area you might know little about and explicates it so brilliantly that you don't even realize how much you've learned (in this case, about glass blowing) while a mystery is unraveled, a crime is solved, and the hero gets the girl.

This time the mise en scène is the glass blowing studio owned by Gerard Logan, friend of the late Martin Stukely, a jockey who takes a fatal fall at the Cheltenham steeplechase during the last race of the century. Still mourning Martin, Gerard is savagely beaten, his workshop ransacked, and his life threatened by a gang of thugs. Investigating, Gerard discovers that the gang includes a domineering woman who's the daughter of Martin's valet and a scientist who's stolen valuable data from the laboratory that formerly employed him. They believe Gerard has possession of a videotape entrusted to him by Martin before his death and that the secrets on the tape are worth Gerard's life.

It's a good set up, with just enough of the usual horse lore and a pleasant love story involving Gerard and a pretty policewoman, neither of which overshadow the taut pacing and the well-worked-out plot. Francis's protagonists may be accidental heroes, but they're not antiheroes; they're usually eminently decent, likable men, and their sense of self is always interesting. Here's Gerard at home, in a break from the action, thinking about the new woman in his heart in a typical Francis love scene:

I walked deliberately through all the rooms, thinking about Catherine, wondering both if she would like the place, and whether the house would accept her in return. Once in the past the house had delivered a definite thumbs-down, and once I'd been given an ultimatum to smother the pale plain walls with brightly patterned paper as a condition of marriage, but to the horror of her family I'd backed out of the whole deal, and, as a result, I now used the house as arbiter and had disentangled myself from a later young woman who'd begun to refer to her and me as "an item" and to reply to questions as "we." We think. No, we don't think.

And, a few pages later,

The speed of development of strong feeling for one another didn't seem to me to be shocking but natural, and if I thought about the future it unequivocally included Catherine Dodd. "If you want to cover the pale plain walls with brightly patterned paper, go ahead," I said.
She laughed. "I like the peace of pale walls. Why should I want to change them?"

It may be Francis's English reticence that keeps him, mercifully, from spoiling a good mystery with what other writers consider the obligatory sex scene, or it just may be the mastery of his form that few of his peers approach. In every page of this terrific new book, he's at the top of it. --Jane Adams [via]

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Straight

by Dick Francis

ISBN 042520846X (0-425-20846-X)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Book summary:

Injured steeplechase jockey Derek Franklin must recover $1.5 million worth of missing diamonds and find out who wanted his brother dead-or else his career won't be the only thing in danger of being cut short. [via]

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To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0330352253 (0-330-35225-3)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd

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Twice Shy

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425198774 (0-425-19877-4)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Under Orders

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0399154000 (0-399-15400-0)
Hardcover, Putnam Pub Group

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"Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon. However, three in a single afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than one eyebrow."

It's the third death on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day that really troubles super-sleuth Sid Halley. Last seen in 1995's Come to Grief, former champion jockey Halley knows the perils of racing all too well-but in his day, jockeys didn't usually reach the finishing line with three .38 rounds in the chest. But this is precisely how he finds jockey Huw Walker-who, only a few hours earlier, had won the coveted Triumph Hurdle.

Just moments before the gruesome discovery, Halley had been called upon by Lord Enstone to make discreet inquiries into why his horses appeared to be on a permanent losing streak. Are races being fixed? Are bookies taking a cut? And if so, are trainers and jockeys playing a dangerous game with stakes far higher than they are realistic?

Halley's quest for answers draws him even deeper into the darker side of the race game, in a life-or-death power play that will push him to his very limits-both professionally and personally. [via]

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