Authors Electric

This month, we take a look at a classic novel you've probably heard of even if you aren't a horsey person and don't normally read books with ponies on the front cover!  Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Being pony mad, and with Black Beauty  accepted as a children's story at the time, I read this book when I was about 10 years old. I can remember enjoying it as a story written from a horse's viewpoint, although not much else of the plot stayed with me over the years. I don't even remember what the cover looked like, only that it was a library book like most of my reading back then, so it was probably a hardcover edition. Weirdly, I've never actually owned a copy of this book, so I picked up a paperback edition from a secondhand bookshop in Hay-on-Wye to re-read with adult eyes for this review. First published in 1877, the story follows Black Beauty's life from a foal in the meadow with his mother, through good times and bad, as he travels from Hampshire to B...

This year, I visited Hay-on-Wye for the festival's Romantasy day. Time I found out what this genre is all about, I decided, since I'm a lifelong fantasy fan and yet somehow (probably since I got published as a children's author and write mainly for the 9-11 age group) missed out on the Romantasy side of things! The two lovely authors on the panel, Hazel McBride and Imani Erriu, soon filled me in on the secret of its appeal. It turns out that this hot new genre, being basically fantasy written by women with a romantic twist, is essentially what I was writing back in the pre-internet days of small indie zines produced in people's garages with their equally small but faithful readership of genre fans/authors. In those days, most of these little zines were edited by men, and their content reflected this. But there was one called Visionary Tongue, whose editorial consultants included female fantasy authors Storm Constantine and Freda Warrington, which published a couple of s...

This month, I bring you some exciting adult fiction by one of the first women to train racehorses in the UK, Jenny Pitman. She has won two Grand Nationals, and in 1984 became the first woman to train a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, winning it again in 1991 when her son Mark was the jockey. She retired from training in 1999. On the Edge Her first novel On the Edge could almost be autobiographical. It follows the fortunes of racehorse trainer Jan Hardy, recently bereaved and left to bring up two young children, as she buys a rundown farm on a Gloucestershire hillside and sets out to transform the place into a training yard fit for thoroughbreds. She starts by running her horses in point-to-points, and soon builds a reputation for turning out winners. Encouraged by her success and her owners, she applies for a licence to train National Hunt racehorses running under rules, but first her stables must pass the Jockey Club's inspection... which, with a temporary canvas roof still over her ...

This month, we saddle up for some racy teenage fiction set in the glamorous world of equine polo. Unbridled by K L McKain " Three couples. Two rival stables. One unforgettable season ." claims the hot pink cover, and this book delivers on all three. Social media princess Bex keeps her string of four polo ponies at Lord Langdon's stables, where they enjoy the best of everything - including, if Bex gets her own way (and she usually does), the handsome Langdon heir Freddie. Her friend Luella is a faithful cheerleader to Bex's enviable lifestyle, until Luella begins a secret romance of her own with a talented groom at the rival Balfour estate. Into this den of equestrian rivalry comes horse-crazy Carrie, who lands her dream job at the Langdon stables and quickly draws the attentions of Freddie. Their romance blossoms, however snogging the boss's son means jeopardising her position and making an enemy of jealous Bex. With a big match for the Guillards Cup approaching, ...

This month we have adult fiction with two novels featuring horses by best-selling 'Me Before You' author Jojo Moyes. The Horse Dancer Part romance, part adventure,  The Horse Dancer  takes its characters on a journey of heart and hoof from the back streets of London to a chateau deep in the French countryside. The story revolves around a beautiful horse called “Boo”, one of the Selle Francais breed used in an exclusive French riding school called the Cadre Noir (rather like the Spanish riding school of Vienna, except the horses are not the more famous white Lipizzaners). The horse belongs to Sarah, granddaughter of dedicated horseman Henri Lachapelle, who used to ride for the Cadre Noir but left France to marry an English girl and move to London. There, his life collapsed. His beloved wife died, and their daughter vanished from their lives shortly after giving birth, leaving Henri in charge of the baby girl. At the start of the book they share a tiny flat in the East End...

My challenge to review a random book for every month of this year ends with a suitably snowy read for the holidays.  Nevertell  by Katharine Orton   was originally published for young readers, which usually means a good read for adults too, and this book delivers a magical story for anyone aged 10+. Nevertell by Katharine Orton Lina and her mother are prisoners in a Siberian labour camp, the only home she's ever known. When a group of daring escapees recruit Lina to steal food from the greenhouse, she finds herself stranded in a snowstorm with desperate men she doesn't trust. Only her best friend Bogdan, who follows them with his smuggled maps, can help Lina find her grandmother in far-off Moscow and rescue her mother. But first they must cross snowy wastes haunted by ghostly hounds and an evil sorceress, who wants to know why she can't enchant Lina. The magical elements creep gently into this book, drawing the reader from its historical Soviet setting into an enchan...

James Allingham at his desk He worked out the cost of the printing, the office and the distribution and soon became fascinated. He saw the venture in its clearest and most material light. To him it appeared as a method of selling low-grade bulk paper at forty times its value with the added advantage that the more of it one sold, the higher the profit became. He saw too that it was the ink on the paper that did the selling, so, the only real problem was which words to print with the ink. (Dance of the Years 1943) Margery &Herbert Margery Allingham was looking back, fictionally, to her grandfather’s decision to found a penny paper, The Christian Globe, 150 years ago. James Allingham had been apprenticed as a compositor. When his father died, he seized his opportunity to invest his legacy share in a slim weekly newspaper. Literacy was beginning to boom in the 1870s as the educational initiatives following the 1867 Electoral Reform Act began leavening the number of readers within the...

My reading has taken a slightly different path this autumn, thanks to the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence. Last month, Machines That Think (part of the New Scientist Expert series) rather blew my mind, despite being published 10 years ago. Since then, AIs have become more sophisticated and even more data hungry, resulting in a class action by authors against Anthropic in the US claiming their copyrights were violated. Similar questions are being asked by the music business, as highlighted in a recent Radio 3 programme The Artificial Composer . AI is also active in other creative industries, such as the art world and video games. It seems creative professionals the world over are in danger of being reduced to hobbyists, helping to train the very AI tools that will enable everyone else to become an instant author or composer, visual artist or video game creator. How did this happen without us noticing? Let me take you back to fiction's favourite prompt: What If? and a bo...

This month, we expand on July's theme of long-distance walking routes to tackle endurance horse races. First we have non-fiction: Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer, which I read in the evenings while riding a much less arduous trail of my own across the Welsh mountains. Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer This beautifully-written memoir by the niece of event rider Lucinda Prior-Palmer describes Lara's experience, aged just 19, of riding the Mongol Derby. Arguably the world's toughest horse race, this 1000 km test of endurance takes place each August across the steppes made famous by Genghis Khan. Riders change mounts at each stopover and complete the course by riding 25 of the tough little Mongolian horses provided by herders along the route. This year's Derby will have just finished by the time this post goes up, but entries are now open for the 2026 race if you are inspired! Second is fiction: The Glory by Lauren St John. The Glory by Lauren St John When I first saw thi...

Non fiction this month, and to celebrate summer we have two different books about walking the UK's South West Coast Path. This scenic 630-mile coastal route winds its way from Minehead in Somerset around the edges of Devon and Cornwall and finally along the Jurassic coast to Poole in Dorset. Despite living in a seaside town on the route, I confess I've walked very little of it, just a few miles of local footpath on my way to somewhere else. But, of course, books about walking the 'Salt Path' are rarely just about the walking. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn Raynor Winn's The Salt Path has recently hit the big screen, although the book is worth seeking out too as the film version only covers part of the whole. This is the story of Raynor and Moth, who become homeless when they have to leave their family farm. With their children grown, and Moth having had a life-changing diagnosis with advice to "be careful on the stairs", they decide to pack up their belongi...

To mark the halfway stage of my reading year and Derby month, I'm reviewing not one but TWO titles by Clare Balding. Both are for young readers and inspired by horses, which fits perfectly with the author's background as the daughter of a racehorse trainer. First up is fiction, and it's a fun read for ages 7+. T he Racehorse Who Wouldn't Gallop by Clare Balding illustrated by Tony Ross 10-year-old Charlie Bass lives on the family farm with her annoying brothers Harry and Larry, a dog called Boris, and a herd of milking cows named after celebrities. When their farm is in financial trouble, the whole family is invited to think of ways to raise some cash. So Charlie buys a racehorse entered for the Derby... bear with me, this is fiction! The only problem is, Noble Warrior ('Noddy' for short) won't go anywhere without his pony friend Percy, and the Bass family can only afford to buy him because several trainers have already given up on him. To be fair to our plu...