So I love reading horse stories. True stories, fictional stories revolving around horses, I love them all. However, with the ability to publish anything on kindle, the general quality of stories seems to be lower. There are some great ones out there like The Dressage Chronicles, Of the Gray Horse, Clifford the red horse etc. But its hard to find those good ones while sifting through fairly bad writing. I’d love to hear your suggestions on good horse stories!
One of these days I’ll port my book database to new software and get it back up for people to read.
Some titles off the top of my head:
Horseplay, by Judy Reene Singer
Kim Ablon Whitney: Blue Ribbons, Summer Circuit, The Perfect Distance
Barbara Morgenroth: Last Junior Year, her Bittersweet Farm series
Patricia Leitch: For Love of a Horse (Ginny and Shantih series), others
Jean Slaughter Doty: Summer Pony, Winter Pony, The Crumb, The Monday Horses, others
KM Peyton: Fly-By-Night is the first to read, but she’s written around 70 novels, not all horsey, but nearly all of them wonderful.
Tudor Robins: Appaloosa Summer
Laura Moore: Ride a Dark Horse, Chance Meeting
Anne McCaffrey: The Lady, Black Horses for the King
Margaret Cabell Self: Sky Rocket, the story of a little bay horse
If you don’t mind going into fantasy, check out
Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar series
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern (the dragons are kind of sentient horse standins)
Robin McKinley’s Pegasus, The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown (others of hers are also excellent but not so much horsey)
Tamora Pierce - her books trend a little younger but in particular, Wild Magic is pretty horsey. Her Tortall books with Alanna (Lioness Quartet) and Keladry (Protector of the Small) are mildly horsey.
Truly, though, with eBook publishing, we’re getting more horse novels than before, and a lot of them are really pretty good. You can usually read a sample for free, which usually tells you enough to know if you should keep reading or not.
There are quite a few authors active on the board and I am one of them so I will first give a plug for my own latest work of fiction, Fortune’s Fool:
On a less cheesy and self-promotional note, for information about lots of great contemporary horse-related fiction and authors, Horseback Reads is a great resource:
It’s a collaborative website run by a number of the authors named by poltroon and a few others, including the wonderful Natalie Keller Reinert. There’s information about their own books and also some other horse-related authors they like.
Natalie Keller Reinert on Amazon is a contemporary author and her stuff is actually good (I know her through TB stuff, full disclosure, but I enjoyed her eventing books as books on their own merit.)
JoAnne Mapsons novels are nice. They are not specifically about “a horse” but rather about a horsewoman and her life. I think the titles are “Hank and Chloe” and “Loving Chloe.”
I just LOVED Impractical Horsewoman’s 2 horse books!! I hope you are writing a 3rd in that series.
[QUOTE=HannahsMom7;8428596]
I just LOVED Impractical Horsewoman’s 2 horse books!! I hope you are writing a 3rd in that series.[/QUOTE]
Thank you so much! 
I am currently working on a third for 2016!
I totally agree with the suggestion to check out HorseBackReads.com. Those authors seem to really know their stuff, and I’m sure they wouldn’t let just anybody in their group.
We also set up an Amazon shopping kiosk at the bottom of the Home page on the StreamHorseTV website. It has several books from the HorseBackReads authors, and also has George Morris’ new book available for pre-order. The kiosk needs Flash and won’t work on an iPad, but it’s a nice feature otherwise. I think my business partner has read all of the books available there.
Subbing! Looking for good books both instructional/educational (riding books with exercises, information, etc.), non-fiction and possibly fiction (not preteen/teen fiction)!
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
A fascinating true story is Strike a Long Trot: Legendary Horsewoman Linda Tellington-Jones by Shannon Yewell Weil.
[QUOTE=Impractical Horsewoman;8428380]
There are quite a few authors active on the board and I am one of them so I will first give a plug for my own latest work of fiction, Fortune’s Fool:[/QUOTE]
I actually have read your book. I thought it was delightful, especially because it was with a male protagonist which is unusual. I saw that you had written that on another thread and promptly freaked out that I was reading a post written by an author. lol
It is so difficult to find a well written, factually correct horse book geared towards adults. I am a reader and I love horses. It makes me so sad that it is so hard to wed these two passions now that I am a grown up. I know I am picky about it (I had a huge problem with the last Dressage Chronicles book, and that might be enough for me not to revisit the author if she were to try again). If authors spend months researching various subjects to bring realism to their work, why can’t they bring that same commitment to researching the horse world when they write about it?
I know there are some YA books out there that adults could get into. But I just can’t engage with YA. I just can’t do it. I am a grown person and I can’t relate to it.
You would think that we are a demographic that would be courted. But that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
Sheilah
[QUOTE=thehorsedream;8429386]
I actually have read your book. I thought it was delightful, especially because it was with a male protagonist which is unusual. I saw that you had written that on another thread and promptly freaked out that I was reading a post written by an author. lol[/QUOTE]
Haha! I’m so glad you enjoyed the book!
And yes, I didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable by mentioning that I was an author! There are a number of wonderful authors posting on COTH and they come out of the woodwork from time to time.
OP:
If you’re not opposed to mysteries, there’s always Dick Francis!
Western: Will James, Thomas C. Hinkle
Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley is one of my favorites.
Kate Lattey - she writes YA, but the Dream series is an older YA. GREAT books - and set in New Zealand, which I find super-fascinating!
I’ve always loved The Five Circles by Barbara May, written in 1959. Now it is more of a young adults type of book - easy, quick read, but the thing that I really love about it is that its based on a true story (about the Canadian Olympics - for eventing), all of the riders are ones I know and the shows they went to (such as the Cup classes at the Royal) are shows I’ve either shown in or been to. Its also written in the horses point of view - horse named Cilroy. Its a great read!
http://www.inthehills.ca/2014/09/back/the-caledon-horse-that-could/
