Martha A. Woodham

See You at Second Horses, Barclay Rives, Aterlerix Press, New York, 2014, Paperback, illustrated, 184 pages, $13.50, available at retail outlets including Horse Country Saddlery, Warrenton, VirginiaThe foxes! Oh, the foxes! When Barclay Rives undertook a marathon of foxhunting in 1999, when he went out with nine English hunts in ten days, it seemed like there was a fox popping out of every covert.

Rives, an honorary whipper-in for the Keswick and Bull Run Hunts (VA), writes about his English sporting adventure in See You at Second Horses, a delightful read that puts us galloping behind some great packs in the glory days before the infamous Hunting Act of 2004 banned hunting with hounds in the traditional manner in England and Wales.

Rives is an avid hunter who once hunted one hundred days a season, sometimes going out with Keswick in the morning and Bull Run in the afternoon. Saying he was gung-ho is an understatement. He jumped at the chance to join his friends Grosvenor and Rosie Merle-Smith to hunt with packs dating back to the 1700s: the Quorn (twice), the Cottesmore, the Fernie, and others, including a foot pack—the High Peak Harriers—after rabbits.

The Masters Ball by Anne-Marie Lacy, 2012, Indigo-Inc Publishing, 206 pages, $25.00From the elegance of the annual fete in New York to a hair-raising ride at closing meet, author Anne-Marie Lacy takes the reader on mad gallop in The Masters Ball, a light-hearted murder mystery with a charming ghost.

The author, who has hunted for seventeen years, drew upon her experiences in the field with the Mooreland Hunt (AL), the Hillsboro Hounds (TN), and the characters she met along the way for her first book. The astute reader will recognize a few larger-than-life, real-life Masters who were Lacy’s inspiration for her characters.