A ten-year-old girl relates her experiences as she and her pony train and prepare for riding competitions.

Magnolia Woodson wants nothing more than to get her and her sister, Rose, out of the pitifully small, clamming-obsessed Oregon town that hates them—she just doesn’t know how. Forced to put up with the snide comments and hateful looks the townspeople throw at them, Mags thinks she’s destined to pay for the horrible, awful thing her mom did—and that she’s left her and Rose to deal with—until the day she dies. But when a nationwide televised dance competition posts tryouts in nearby Portland, Mags’s best friend, George, says they have to go and audition. Not only have they spent the past fourteen years of their lives dancing side-by-side, dreaming of a day just like this, but also it could be Mags’s chance of a lifetime—a chance to win the grand-prize money and get her and Rose out of Summerland, a chance to do the thing she loves most with everyone watching, a chance to show the town that she’s not—and has never been—a “no-good Woodson girl,” like her mother. But will the competition prove too steep? And will Mags be able to retain her friendship with George as they go head-to-head in tryouts? Mags will have to learn that following her dreams may mean changing her life forever.

"In this artfully conceived volume, photographer Jill Greenberg captures the grand and enigmatic nature of the horse through her signature technique of digitally hand-painted photographs. ... A short story by acclaimed novelist A.M. Homes, equally talented at provocation, completes the volume"--

"Last night I finished reading your Jill and the Lost Ponies. I can honestly say that It is one of the best sequels I’ve read... I love the way you tie in previous events from the Jill books and the way you weave the various characters into the plot. I love the way Jill talks to the reader, the comments she makes and the language she uses, because they are all so “Jill-like” and feel authentic to such an extent that it really feels as if RF is actually writing it... Thank you for a wonderful book." (Kate) "I read Jill and the Lost Ponies, and it was brilliant, thank you! It completely brought Jill back. I haven't enjoyed anything that much for a long time." (Helen) In Ruby Ferguson's Pony Jobs for Jill, Captain Cholly-Sawcutt told Jill and Ann to put ponies aside as a hobby and go and do a shorthand course. I always wondered what would happen if they went off and did just that. And so in this sequel to the Jill books, set in the 1950s, we find Jill and Ann are at a London secretarial college, doing what they've been told to do. WIth ponies left firmly behind them. Or so they think.

August 1781 saw the publication of a manual on fox hunting that would become a classic of its genre. Hugely popular in its own day, Peter Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting is often cited as marking the birth of modern hunting and continues to be quoted from affectionately today by the hunting fraternity. Less stressed is the fact that its subject was immediately controversial, and that a hostile review which appeared on the heels of the manual's publication raised two criticisms of fox hunting that would be repeated over the next two centuries: fox hunting was a cruel sport and a feudal, anachronistic one at that. This study explores the attacks made on fox hunting from 1781 to the legal ban achieved in 2004, as well as assessing the reasons for its continued appeal and post-ban survival. Chapters cover debates in the areas of: class and hunting; concerns over cruelty and animal welfare; party politics; the hunt in literature; and nostalgia. By adopting a thematic approach, the author is able to draw out the wider social and cultural implications of the debates, and to explore what they tell us about national identity, social mores and social relations in modern Britain.