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£16.99
2035: In the shadow of a race course, a young woman finds a robot named Coli on a scrap heap, contemplating the sky. Intrigued, she takes him into her care and learns how he is designed to be a humanoid jockey. She and Coli are determined to rescue his beloved race horse who is heading for the knackers’ yard after a lifetime of overwork. To remind the horse of happier times, they hatch a special plan to let her run another race. But it will be no ordinary event – they will train her to run the slowest time of her life. In the heat of the race, Coli feels the horse running too fast. She is in pain and will soon injure herself. To save his friend, Coli will commit one final act of bravery.
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£8.99
When her beloved horse Porcellus sires a new foal, Dido hopes he will be the missing piece in her quest to train the greatest team ever seen at the Circus Maximus. But grief and a desire for revenge are clouding her judgement. Then her old friend Parmenion asks her to shelter the runaway son of her bitterest rival and help him fulfil his dream of becoming a charioteer. Can Dido and the boy, Damon, help each other find a way out of darkness? And who will claim the right to be known as the sport’s ultimate champion in one last battle for racing glory?
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£22.00
Rather like the regions intoned on BBC Radio’s ‘Shipping Forecast,’ the names of Britain’s sixty or so racecourses are regularly broadcast on TV and Radio sports programmes. But what are the racecourses actually like? Britain, where the thoroughbred evolved and where the sport of horseracing developed, has the most varied racing in the world and 60 racecourses in Britain have distinctive, intriguing and often eccentric atmospheres. Some are in parkland (Kempton, Sandown), and some follow the contours of rolling downs (Epsom, Goodwood). Some adjoin housing (Aintree, Ayr), some are bang next to busy roads (Doncaster, Wetherby), and some offer the racegoer uninterrupted views of gorgeous scenery (Cheltenham, Goodwood again).
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£7.99
In Renaissance Siena, a city ravaged by plague, Sofia’s mother carves beautiful mementoes for the grieving from the bones of their loved ones. But one day, she doesn’t return home. Sofia and her friends follow clues carved in bone until they find the terrible truth …
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£16.99
The Mongol Derby is the world’s toughest horse race. A feat of endurance across the vast Mongolian plains once traversed by the people of Genghis Khan, competitors ride 25 horses across a distance of 1000km. Many riders don’t make it to the finish line. In 2013 Lara Prior-Palmer – 19, underprepared but seeking the great unknown – decided to enter the race. Driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses, she raced for seven days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she found she had nothing to lose, and tore through the field with her motley crew of horses. In one of the Derby’s most unexpected results, she became the youngest-ever champion and the first woman to win the race.
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£20.00
In 2006 many in the racing industry had written trainer Henry Cecil off. Personally, and professionally, Cecil was at his lowest ebb. But that was about to change. Henry Cecil staged the greatest comeback ever seen in horseracing, much of it despite suffering serious ill-health, which culminated in the success of Frankel, Timeform’s highest rated horse of all-time. Now, for the first time, writer Tony Rushmer tells this incredible story. Tony had joined the Cecil stables in 2006 and so witnessed this story of personal and professional redemption from the inside. With the full support of the Cecil family, Tony speaks to all those involved and in doing so brings vividly to life the triumph of Henry Cecil.
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£16.99
Lata Brandisová was a truly inspiring woman: a shy countess who achieved the seemingly impossible. Not only was she the first woman to win the toughest horse race in the world, she was also the first woman to even take part. She had to fight a ferocious battle against prejudice simply to get to the starting line. She then showed repeatedly that she was tougher and better than the best male jockeys of her day. She won her greatest victory at the age of 42, in circumstances of extraordinary historical drama, on the eve of the Second World War, in a desperate showdown with Nazi Germany. Some believe that, by defeating the feared horsemen of Himmler’s SS cavalry, she provoked Hitler into war. And that, remarkably, is only part of the story.
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£9.99
Patrice des Moutis was a handsome, charming and well-educated Frenchman with an aristocratic family, a respectable insurance business, and a warm welcome in the smartest Parisian salons. He was also a compulsive gambler and illegal bookie. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, he made a daring attempt to beat the French state-run betting system. His success so alarmed the authorities that they repeatedly changed the rules of betting in an effort to stop him. And so a battle of wills began, all played out on the front pages of daily newspapers as the general public willed Patrice des Moutis on to ever-greater successes. He remained one step ahead of the state until finally the government criminalised his activities, driving him into the arms of the underworld. Eventually the net began to close, high-profile characters found themselves the target of the state’s investigation, and people began turning up dead.
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£25.00
Remarkable Racecourses is a beautifully presented collection of amazing racecourses from five continents captured by some of the world’s greatest racing photographers.
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£16.99
A natural on a horse since he was able to walk and imbued with a pure love of riding, Declan Murphy became one of the most brilliant jockeys of his generation before his world came crashing down at the final hurdle of a race at Haydock Park. His skull shattered in 12 places, he was believed to be dead, the last rites were read and the Racing Post published his obituary. Miraculously, and the word is not used lightly, he survived and defied medical thinking in recovering to the extent that 18 months after his fall he was able to saddle up for one more race.
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£12.99
One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise – ‘I was at Secretariat’s Derby, in ’73. That was – just beauty, you know?’ John Jeremiah Sullivan didn’t know, but he spent two years finding out, journeying from prehistoric caves to the Kentucky Derby. The result is ‘Blood Horses,’ a wise, humorous memoir exploring the relationship between man and horse and the relationship between a sportswriter’s son and his late father.
