A brilliant novel that captures the dusty, dark, and beautiful world of small-time horse racing, where trainers, jockeys, grooms and grifters vie for what little luck is offered at a run-down West Virginia track .

Tommy Hansel has a plan: run four horses, all better than they look on paper, at long odds at Indian Mound Downs, then grab the purse -- or cash a bet -- and run before anyone's the wiser. At his side is Maggie Koderer, who finds

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First in the Kentucky trilogy from the #1 bestselling author. "Prose so natural that it seems you are witnessing a story rather than reading about it." —Los Angeles Sunday Times

The Colemans and Thorntons, the unforgettable American families of Fern Michaels' Texas and Vegas series, are back in an exciting trilogy that combines the heady thrills of Kentucky horse racing with strong, accomplished women who fight for...

When an Earl passionate about horses becomes the target of her husband hunt, Amanda Locke knows it's time to overcome her fear of riding. With her sister-in-law Ophelia hastening the romance along by arranging riding lessons, Amanda is soon taking instruction from infuriating Devin Baldwin. Astonishingly, in her daily encounters with Devin--who treats her as an ordinary young woman, not a prize to be won at the marriage mart--Amanda experiences passion...

Nicholas Foxton, a former jockey who suffered a career-ending injury, is out for a day at the Grand National races when his friend and coworker, Herb Kovak, is murdered right in front of him and 60,000 other potential witnesses. As he struggles to come to terms with Kovak's seemingly inexplicable death, Foxton begins to question how well he knew his friend. Was the murder a case of mistaken identity or something more sinister?

"Felix Francis is back with another edge-of-your-seat thriller, in the classic Dick Francis tradition. Undercover investigator Jeff Hinkley is assigned by the British Horseracing Authority to look into the activities of a suspicious racehorse trainer, but as he's tailing his quarry through the Cheltenham Racing Festival, the last thing he expects to witness is a gruesome murder. Could it have something to do with the reason the trainer was banned...

Spenser is back and embroiled in a dangerous and multi-layered case. Someone has been killing racehorses at stables across the south, and Walter Clive, president of Three Fillies Stables, hires him to find out who. Spenser goes to Georgia to protect Hugger Mugger, a two-year-old destined to become the next Secretariat. Disregarding the resentment of the local Georgia law enforcement, he takes the case. Despite the veneer of civility, Spenser encounters...

In this edge-of-the-seat finale to the trilogy that has reunited the Coleman and Thornton families, New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels sets our pulses pounding as horsewoman Nealy Coleman faces her greatest challenge--to produce another Derby winner and show the world that a determined woman never quits... Kentucky Sunrise When it comes to men, Nealy is very content with her new husband, lawyer Hatch Littletree. When it comes to horses,...

"Chew on this," says Melrose Plant to Richard Jury, who's in the hospital being driven crazy by Hannibal, a nurse who likes to speculate on his chances for survival. Jury could use a good story, preferably one not ending with his own demise. Plant tells Jury of something he overheard in The Grave Maurice, a pub near the hospital. A woman told an intriguing story about a girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter to the owner of the Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire,...

"It is said that everyone over a certain age can remember distinctly what they were doing when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated, or that Princess Diana had been killed in a Paris car crash, but I, for one, could recall all too clearly where I was standing when a policeman told me that my wife had been murdered. Bill Russell is acting as a volunteer steward at Warwick races when he confronts his worst nightmare--the violent death...

Architect and family man Lee Morris never gave much thought to the shares he inherited of the Stratton Park racecourse, the multi-million dollar property owned by the powerful Stratton family. His mother had first received the shares to keep her quiet about the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her first husband, Keith Stratton. Now, much to Lee's chagrin, he is being drawn into the thick of the Stratton family squabbles as they wage a furious...