Horse Memoir

In 1954, 63-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow.

Billy the Kid - a.k.a. Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney - was a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue, and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single-handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, New Mexico, deputies, killed during the Kid's brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on April 28, 1881.

In his first true crime memoir, undercover operator Norm Boucher recounts eight months spent infiltrating Vancouver's heroin scene, a world of paranoia, ripoffs, and violence. It is 1983 and the War on Drugs is intensifying. From his barroom observer's seat, Boucher candidly reveals the lives of heroin addicts who spend each day looking for their next hit. Their dangerous subculture, centered around three gritty hotels on the Granville Strip, becomes Boucher's domain as he attempts both to gain acceptance in a world far removed from his own and to keep himself safe.

It was a cool, quiet evening at Calumet Farm, where the most valuable racehorses—including the prolific stallion Alydar—had settled into their stalls for the evening. Alton Stone, filling in for the regular night watchman, completed his rounds at the barn. Although nothing seemed out of the ordinary, an inexplicable hunch led Stone to check on Alydar. What he found—a grievously injured horse with no discernable cause—jump-started one of the biggest mysteries to ever hit the horse racing world.

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977—his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen’s best-selling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse—and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. A wise and unsettling book, Prison Writings is both memoir and manifesto, chronicling Peltier’s life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

In Bloodlines, Emmy and National Magazine award-winning journalist Melissa del Bosque follows Lawson and Perez's harrowing attempt to dismantle a cartel leader's American racing dynasty built on extortion and blood money. With extensive access to investigative evidence and in-depth interviews with key players, del Bosque turns more than three years of research and her decades of reporting on Mexico and the border into a gripping narrative about greed and corruption.

Beautiful and hilarious, tearful and rambunctious, very real, ironic, and magic-filled, Martín Prechtel’s book The Mare and the Mouse is a series of lyrical sagas in tribute to each of the native New Mexican horses that carried him through his youth on the Reservation and then again during the difficult times following his return home after over a decade in the Mayan Highlands of Guatemala.

John Corabi recounts his life from the mean streets of Philadelphia to the Sunset Strip. Take a look behind the scenes at Corabi’s time fronting Mötley Crüe, Union, and The Dead Daisies, as well as his time playing rhythm guitar with Ratt and even his stint as a long-haul trucker. Whether it’s detailing his parents' difficult divorce, his family’s dark history of abuse, his run-in with a serial killer, or simply the best way to arrive at a wedding—which maybe is by helicopter and maybe it isn’t—he pulls no punches and outlines the good and bad of it all in this raucous autobiography.

In the 1970s, more than a million young people moved to farms and communes all over the US. There was a war on, and they wanted no part of it. This is a book about those days and one of those communes, told by Peter Gould, one of Vermont's master storytellers, known for decades to fans of Burnt Toast, Gould & Stearns, A Peasant of El Salvador, and Write Naked.

Discover the remarkable life of Crazy Horse... Famed Lakota warrior Crazy Horse was more than just a fearless fighter—he was a symbol of resistance and commitment to his people’s way of life. During his life, the Lakota faced relentless pressure from all sides. Rival tribes waged war over land and resources while waves of US settlers, backed by an ever-growing military presence, pushed further into their territory on the Great Plains. Despite these challenges, Crazy Horse stood unwavering, fighting not for personal glory but for the survival of his people and their homeland.

Growing up on a ranch in Sterling, Colorado, Frederick Libby tamed countless horses, drove cattle, and even roped an antelope. When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the Canadian army with the same happy-go-lucky daring and grit with which he approached all things. In France, he became an aviator with the Royal Flying Corp, downing an enemy plane on his first day of battle over the Somme. He went on to become an ace, with 24 victories to his credit, just two less than Captain Eddie Rickenbacher. This is a rare piece of Americana, told in as pure and compelling a voice from the vernacular heart of this country as you will ever hear.

AN AWE-INSPIRING TRUE STORY of Angela Lenhardt and Trigger the Wonder Horse is a testament of faith and how the power of prayer can change your life. This book is for anyone in need of a reminder that when life gets you down and you’re faced with uncertainty and fear, God is omnipresent. Within your own heart, exists a superpower called love, that will open up a world of possibilities once you connect and believe in it.

Hutton has now written a fascinating full biography of Sergeant Reckless, who earned two Purple Hearts for her heroic efforts, among other military decorations. Hutton has spoken with the marines who fought alongside Reckless and tells the complete and captivating tale of how a would-be Korean racehorse became one of the greatest Marine Corps wartime heroes. Sgt. Reckless brings the legend back to life more than half a century later.

In this moving memoir, Maeve Birch explores the dynamics between traditional horse handling and her communications with horses, which often didn’t align with what she was taught. In the stories shared, human issues such as codependency, lack of boundaries, impatience, violence, and fear crop up again and again, shaping horse and human relationships. Standing in a Field With Horses provides a window into the mind, spirituality, and social undercurrents of a woman trapped between obedience and self-expression along with the horses

Detective Samson O'Brien is ready to settle down to a nice cup of tea, but it's not long before he's called on for help with a new case. In order to execute a recent will, solicitor Matty Thistlethwaite requires a copy of a death certificate for a young woman who died when Samson was a child. It should be straightforward, but things in Bruncliffe rarely are. Particularly when Matty insists that Delilah Metcalfe, with her wealth of local knowledge, works alongside Samson on the sensitive investigation.

In the roaring '20s, adventurous young Sonora Webster sees an exciting act that will change her life forever. Hooves pound as a horse gallops up the ramp of a 40-foot-tall tower. A girl in a sparkly swimsuit waits at the top, and at the last possible second, leaps on its back as they dive through the air, falling to a tank of water far below with thunderous applause. Sonora is hooked. From that moment on, she is determined to BE that girl, despite the danger, and endeavors to join the diving horse troupe. This memoir follows her exciting career and life on the road as a traveling performer.

They landed in a dust storm so thick the pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. Welcomed by a band of heavily armed militiamen, they climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They trekked through minefields, sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who'd shared food with them hours before. The men they helped called them brothers. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers. They called themselves Green Berets—Special Forces ODA 595.

History was made at the 2015 Belmont Stakes when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the first since Affirmed in 1978. As magnificent as the champion is, the team behind him has been all too human while on the road to immortality. Written by an award-winning New York Times sportswriter, American Pharoah is the definitive account not only of how the ethereal colt won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, but how he changed lives. Through extensive interviews, Drape explores the making of an exceptional racehorse, chronicling key events en route to history.

On an early summer morning in 2001, Mandy Retzlaff received the phone call that she and her family had been dreading. Her farmhouse in northern Zimbabwe was being decimated at the hands of an angry mob of Robert Mugabe’s war veterans, who had been tasked with driving white farmers from their homes. In just a few short days, forty-five of Mandy’s neighbours narrowly escaped with their lives and decided to leave Zimbabwe behind.

A love letter to mothers everywhere, About My Mother will make you laugh and cry—and see yourself in its reflection. Peggy Rowe’s story of growing up as the daughter of Thelma Knobel is filled with warmth and humor. But Thelma could be your mother—there’s a Thelma in everyone’s life. She’s the person taking charge—the one who knows instinctively how things should be.