At nearly eighteen, easy-going young Benedict Julliard has no stronger ambition than to ride in steeplechases as an amateur jockey. As his father, George, makes his ambitious drive towards the Prime Ministership and occupancy of No. 10 Downing Street, Ben is plunged into a frightening morass of lies and treachery. Read More...

Valentine, a blind, confused and dying old man, seeking his peace with God, makes his last confession to a visiting friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. This puts Thomas in a moral dilemma. Wild horses wouldn't drag from a priest the secrets of the confessional - but then Thomas is not a priest. Read More...

Blood ties can mean trouble, chains and fatal obligation. Champion steeplechase jockey Kit Fielding, snared by bonds reaching back into history, discovers this to be only too true when he finds he cannot escape from an intensely dangerous situation. Read More...

Jonathon Derry, crack shot with a rifle and pretty good in the classroom, was contented in general with his life as a schoolmaster and, but for the frantic action of a distant friend, would never have found himself plunged into a dark world of danger. Read More...

Philip Nore, steeplechase jockey, asked no more from life than horses to ride and time to himself to spend on his other great interest, photography. Like a minefield of dragons' teeth, whole crops of problems suddenly erupted in his path, disturbing and threatening and ultimately dangerous. Read More...

Moira Pembroke, avaricious and calculating, is brutally murdered, her face pushed down into a sack of potting compost. Moira was multi-millionaire Malcolm Pembroke's fifth wife and their marriage estranged Malcolm form his favourite son, Ian. But it is to Ian that Malcolm now turns for help. Read More...

For the first time, Dick Francis has compiled a volume of short stories, the settings ranging form the National Hunt Festival at Cheltenham, where a middle-aged owner falls helplessly in love with her jockey, to the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, where the demon drink and wilting willpower take their toll. Read More...

At thirty-five, Freddie Croft has retired as a steeplechase jockey and now runs a fleet of motor horseboxes transporting runners form their stables to the races, or brood mares to the stud farms. One of the hard and fast rules for all his drivers is never to pick up a hitchhiker, but of course one day they do, and by the time they reach base the passenger is dead. Read More...

Peter Darwin, a young First Secretary in the Foreign Office, returns to England from Tokyo for some quiet leave before taking up a new post. On the way he stops briefly in Miami, and there becomes entangled in a fracas which involves his going back not just to England but to Gloucestershire, scene of the long-buried memories of his childhood. Read More...

Despite knowing precious little about the world of racing, John Kendall agrees to write the biography of Tremayne Vickers, a highly successful National Hunt racecourse trainer. But ignorance proves to be harrowing: Kendall's impulsive decision stretches his survival skills and ingenuity to the limit. Read More...