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STALKING HORSE

Name: STALKING HORSE
Author: Bill Shoemaker
ISBN: 0-449-90595-0

by Bill Shoemaker ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1994

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The doyen of American jockeys, following in Dick Francis's hoofprints for perhaps the first time ever, turns to fiction with this thriller about—what else?—a retired jockey's adventures in the post-riding world. Seven years ago, Raymond Starbuck was the Jockey Club chief steward who barred Coley Killebrew from racing after a track accident that left one rider dead and Francie Dorn, Coley's lover, wealthy and departed from Coley's bed. Now Starbuck, still active on the racing scene, wants Coley to go undercover in order to prevent high-rolling businessman Remy Courville and his Southern Boy Supplies from taking control of the Santa Rosita racetrack. Starbuck's plan calls for Coley to try fixing the Dixie Derby, at New Orleans's (and Southern Boy's) Magnolia Park, so that Remy's favored horse, Cajun Desire, will lose. It also calls for Starbuck's leggy blond daughter Lea to tip Remy off about the fix and worm her way into Remy's confidence. In return, Starbuck tells Coley, he'll give him $10,000 and Francie Dorn's current address. (He doesn't tell him that his predecessor in New Orleans has just died suspiciously.) No sooner does Coley break through a surrounding cordon of enforcers, money men, and hangers-on to make contact with Remy, than, inspired by the recent rise in mortality rates at Santa Rosita and Magnolia, he changes the plan: He'll go to work for Remy himself and see what information he can nose out- -or steal—about Southern Boy. He doesn't count on tangling with the likes of Romeo Vetticino, Joey Lunchbox, Jerry the Hat, Hurricane Bruce—or his one-time lover, Francie Dorn.... An appealing debut, with lots of thrills and spills, and the climactic hurricane shows just how well Coley can take a damp track—even though, in the end, the legendary Shoe overcrowds his field with characters. Here's hoping he gives Coley another mount soon.

Pub Date: April 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-449-90595-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
DARK HORSE
by Bill Shoemaker

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE HORSE
by Bill Shoemaker

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.