Horseracing: books tagged “horseracing” @ 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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Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing

by Tom Ainslie

ISBN 0671656554 (0-671-65655-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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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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The Big Horse

by Joe McGinniss

ISBN 0743260791 (0-7432-6079-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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The Big Horse: ISBN 0743260791 (0-7432-6079-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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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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 0425207188 (0-425-20718-8)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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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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Dead Cert

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425194973 (0-425-19497-3)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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As jockey Alan York looked at the back of Bill Davidson astride the great horse Admiral, one thing was different. Before his rival reached the last hurdle, he was dead. Alan knew racing was dangerous; he also knew Bill's death was no accident. It was the kind of knowledge that could get a man killled....
"The best thriller writer going."
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY [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 9780425197059 (0-425-19705-0, 0425197050)

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Enquiry

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0425197050 (0-425-19705-0)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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A closed-door enquiry has found a jockey guilty of the lowest possible crime--throwing a race for money. His reputation scarred, he's begun his own investigation--but asking the wrong questions just might get him killed.

[via]

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High Stakes

by Dick Francis

ISBN 156895008X (1-56895-008-X)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Steven Scott may have been a successful, wealthy inventor with no experience in horseracing, but with the inspired guidance of his trainer, Jody Leeds, and the prowess of a beautiful black hurdler named Energise, he has brought home several wins. But his winning streak is about to come to a fast end when he discovers trouble in his own stablestrouble that could bring about his own termination if he doesnt watch his step&

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Hot Money

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0449212408 (0-449-21240-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Malcolm Pembroke never expected to make a million pounds without making enemies. Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home - but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he finds his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise. Soon he's playing the international bloodstock market for incredible stakes. Not the safest bet for a man on the run from avaricious relatives. Particularly when one of them got a bomb... [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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Charles Todd makes a living as painter of horses. Someone else is making a lot of money by forging paintings by masters. [via]

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Investing at the Racetrack

by William L. Scott

ISBN 0671630172 (0-671-63017-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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ISBN 9780449219553 (0-449-21955-0, 0449219550)

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Longshot

by Dick Francis

ISBN 0449219550 (0-449-21955-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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"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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Risk: Library Edition

by Dick Francis

ISBN 1568492812 (1-56849-281-2)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:

A crime novel set in the world of horse racing, in which an amateur steeplechase jockey finds himself the target of a vicious persecution for which there appears to be no reason. [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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