Showing results for "francis" in Literature & Fiction

It's the third death on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day that really troubles super-sleuth Sid Halley. Former champion jockey Halley knows the perils of racing all too well – but in his day, jockeys didn't usually reach the finishing line with three .38 rounds in the chest. But this is precisely how he finds jockey Huw Walker – who, only a few hours earlier, had won the coveted Triumph Hurdle.

The night before the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie Gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour of the occasion that top chef Max Moreton is cooking the evening's meal. Founder of the racing town's favourite Michelin-starred restaurant, the Hay Net, Max is something of a celebrity in Newmarket circles.

Fast-paced radio dramatisations of six of Dick Francis' classic racing thrillers, plus bonus documentary Enquiry After riding the favourite into second place, jockey Kelly Hughes loses his licence. But he didn't throw the race, and is determined to find out who framed him... Rat Race A cushy job...

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Dick Francis's thriller, Under Orders, read by Martin Jarvis. "Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon. However, three in one afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow." It's the third death that really troubles former...

Theo Jennings is a young auctioneer at the Thoroughbred sales ring in Newmarket. The October yearling sales are where the big money exchanges hands in frenzied auctions. It's the greatest gamble in all of horseracing, and one that can end in ruin. Theo has just made the biggest sale of his life when he overhears a secret conversation between the two bidders – can they really have colluded to fix the price of his big sale? When that same horse is found dead the next morning, he has no choice but to investigate.

When he wakes in a pitch-black room with his hands bound, Roland Britten – accountant and champion steeplechase jockey – knows he’s entered a nightmare of someone else’s making. Wracking his brain to figure out who’s out to get him and why, he comes up empty, but somehow manages a death-defying escape. It isn’t long, though, before he’s recaptured.

Jockey Philip Nore is no ordinary hero. When Nore began to suspect that a track photographer's fatal accident was really murder, he sets out to discover the truth and to trap the killer. Slowly, he unravels some nasty secrets involving corruption, blackmail and murder – and unwittingly sets himself up as the killer's next target.

The house was stripped bare of all its treasures. Gone was the furniture, the family silver, the paintings and the antique china. And if that was a shock for Charles Todd, painter of horses, how much more harrowing was the trauma for his cousin Donald, whose house it was and whose young wife lay on the sitting room floor, bloody and dead... A coincidental meeting with a middle-aged widow sends Charles off to Australia, on the trail of a gang with a fruitful business in forging works of art.

Henry Grey doesn't particularly care for having been born the heir to an earldom. he is a reserved young man whose greatest problem is his mother's match-making plots and whose greatest joy is to ride as an amateur steeplechase jockey. But on a sudden impulse, he throws in his respectable desk job to join a firm which transports racehorses all over the world.

When a sick friend asks Edward Lincoln to investigate the comprehensive failure of a string of racehorses, he agrees to help out. But it is impossible for him to go about the task quietly and unnoticed because he is now a world-class star of action films, in which he always plays the hero. And the apparently easy survey of the string of racehorses blows him through a smokescreen into circumstances, where, to survive, he has to make himself become the man everyone else already thinks he is.

Jockey Kelly Hughes and trainer Dexter Cranfield had been barred from racing – a devastating event for them both. The charge at the secret enquiry? Throwing a race for personal profit. It was a vicious frame-up and, worse, they had nowhere to turn to clear their names. Still Hughes refused to take the phony verdict lying down – even though his quest to clear his name might have him lying down permanently.

Harrison Foster is a lawyer by training but works as a crisis manager for a London firm that specialises in such matters. Summoned to Newmarket after a fire in the Chadwick Stables slaughters six very valuable horses, including the short-priced favourite for the Derby, Harry (as he is known) finds there is far more to the ‘simple’ fire than initially meets the eye. For a start, human remains are found amongst the equestrian ones in the burnt-out shell. All the stable staff are accounted for, so who is the mystery victim?

When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than he’d ever imagined.

A heartwarming and hilarious new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of FRANK AND RED EARLY READER REVIEWS: 'It's a little piece of magic' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'Transported me back to childhood and a time before social media dominated our lives' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'Mr. Coyne, your...

Bill Russell is acting as a volunteer steward at Warwick races when he confronts his worst nightmare - the violent death of his wife. But worse is to come when he is accused of killing her and hounded mercilessly by the media. His life begins to unravel completely as he loses his job and his home. Even his best friends turn against him, believing him guilty of the heinous crime in spite of the lack of compelling evidence. Bill sets out to clear his name but finds that proving one’s innocence is not easy - one has to find the true culprit, and Bill believes he knows who it is....

Steeplechase jockey Kit Fielding has just ridden another winner for his patron – the Princess – when his distraught twin sister Holly comes to him with terrible news. A newspaper is printing stories that will put her husband, Bobby Allardeck, and his stables out of business.Putting aside the age-old Fielding-Allardeck feud, Kit decides to try to find out who is behind these cruel stories.

A rural romance, as described by the author, set in Dorset. A 58 year old farmer meets the beautiful young grand-daughter of a recently deceased friend and they marry but she is soon widowed herself. - Summary by Belinda Loveday

Captain Thomas Forsyth’s second tour of Afghanistan is cut brutally short when he’s badly wounded by a roadside bomb. Tom’s world is torn apart by the injury – the Army is his life. The thought of never rejoining his regiment is a terrifying prospect and one that he is not willing to entertain. Tom returns to Lambourn, to his childhood home, where his mother is a racehorse trainer and the ‘First Lady’ of racing.

Gene Hawkins, investigator by trade, was expert at arranging events so that they appeared accidental to all involved. Therefore, when he himself witnessed an ‘accident’ his curiosity flared up bright, and he insisted on looking into what he regarded as a work of art. A quarter of a million pounds worth of Derby-winning stallion had vanished into the Blue Grass of Kentucky... and a young man and a girl spent a dangerous afternoon in a punt on the River Thames.

A British jockey, riding in Norway, has disappeared, and with him has gone a day's takings from the turnstiles of Oslo racecourse. The Norwegian police have found no trace of him, nor have the British, and the case is being filed as just one more unsolved theft. David Cleveland, investigator for the Jockey Club, is a last resort. He goes without much expectation, and finds himself in waters as dark and deep as the fjords.