98 books like Wild Horses of the Summer Sun

By Tory Bilski,

Here are 98 books that Wild Horses of the Summer Sun fans have personally recommended if you like Wild Horses of the Summer Sun. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Lady Long Rider: Alone Across America on Horseback

Candace Wade Author Of Horse Sluts: The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw

From my list on horse journeys not to be missed.

Why am I passionate about this?

The me of me is a “late in life rider” and freelance writer—with an edge. I learned to ride horses in my ‘40s when we left the wonders of California for sweet tea, okra, and equine “yard art” of Tennessee. Horses and writing mixed to create Horse Sluts. My political bent led me to craft an exposé on the brutal “training” of Big Lick TN Walking Horses. I still ride and explore the more humorous sides of aging and riding. A stickler for "writing worth reading,” I eschew self-conscious, wandering-lost writing. The books I recommended are well crafted.

Candace's book list on horse journeys not to be missed

Candace Wade Why did Candace love this book?

Bernice tells us a story. Her clean, quiet narrative rides us with her. Bernice was soft spoken, unpretentious, and steadily courageous. A long-time, long distance, trail boss told me he was humbled after sitting on an Adventure Riding panel with Bernice.

Bernice lived and wrote the partnership she had with her horses. Her book is a last gift to those of us who dream of horse adventure.

By Bernice Ende,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Lady Long Rider as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In her incredible memoir, Lady Long Rider: Alone Across America on Horseback we are introduced to Bernice Ende, a solitary figure with the daunting goal of traveling from Trego, Montana to New Mexico in a single ride. At the age of 50, Bernice turned south into the unknown and began her first voyage on the way to becoming a world-class long rider. Since that fateful decision she hasn't looked back. Accompanied by her horses and an exceptional dog named Claire, Ende has logged more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, crisscrossing North America and beyond.


Book cover of Half Broke: A Memoir

Candace Wade Author Of Horse Sluts: The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw

From my list on horse journeys not to be missed.

Why am I passionate about this?

The me of me is a “late in life rider” and freelance writer—with an edge. I learned to ride horses in my ‘40s when we left the wonders of California for sweet tea, okra, and equine “yard art” of Tennessee. Horses and writing mixed to create Horse Sluts. My political bent led me to craft an exposé on the brutal “training” of Big Lick TN Walking Horses. I still ride and explore the more humorous sides of aging and riding. A stickler for "writing worth reading,” I eschew self-conscious, wandering-lost writing. The books I recommended are well crafted.

Candace's book list on horse journeys not to be missed

Candace Wade Why did Candace love this book?

I tend to flee from memoirs and “horse story” books. Then I read Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney.

Ginger is a schooled writer, horse trainer, clinician, rider-trainer and, in my opinion, a master observer. She was asked to help the tooth-bearing, ear-pinning, predatory gang of horses tended by the Livestock Team of resident “multiple offenders and felons” at an alternative-prison ranch in New Mexico. As a memoir, Half Broke is a “peeling off” of emotional bandages—for her, for the raw souls of the inmates and for the horses.

Ginger’s style is straightforward, non-judgmental, and thought challenging. No gooey anthropomorphizing.

By Ginger Gaffney,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Half Broke as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured.

The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered. With deep…


Book cover of Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life

Candace Wade Author Of Horse Sluts: The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw

From my list on horse journeys not to be missed.

Why am I passionate about this?

The me of me is a “late in life rider” and freelance writer—with an edge. I learned to ride horses in my ‘40s when we left the wonders of California for sweet tea, okra, and equine “yard art” of Tennessee. Horses and writing mixed to create Horse Sluts. My political bent led me to craft an exposé on the brutal “training” of Big Lick TN Walking Horses. I still ride and explore the more humorous sides of aging and riding. A stickler for "writing worth reading,” I eschew self-conscious, wandering-lost writing. The books I recommended are well crafted.

Candace's book list on horse journeys not to be missed

Candace Wade Why did Candace love this book?

Horse People is an oldie but a goodie. It is a canter through Central Park... being thrown onto the hood of a taxi... his horse startled on Columbus and Ninth then trying to back through the door of the White Tower hamburger shop. It is riding lessons on Staten Island, and close-your-eyes-and-hope-for-the-best at the Break Your Neck Fox Hunt. Korda’s story is honest—an equestrian smile. My ego was salved when I read some activities on horseback scared Korda too. The quality writing takes us over each jump.

By Michael Korda,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Horse People as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bestselling author Michael Korda's Horse People is the story -- sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes sad and moving, always shrewdly observed -- of a lifetime love affair with horses, and of the bonds that have linked humans with horses for more than ten thousand years. It is filled with intimate portraits of the kind of people, rich or poor, Eastern or Western, famous or humble, whose lives continue to revolve around the horse.

Korda is a terrific storyteller, and his book is intensely personal and seductive, a joy for everyone who loves horses. Even those who have never ridden will be…


Book cover of Hold Your Horses: Nuggets of Truth for People Who Love Horses...No Matter What

Candace Wade Author Of Horse Sluts: The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw

From my list on horse journeys not to be missed.

Why am I passionate about this?

The me of me is a “late in life rider” and freelance writer—with an edge. I learned to ride horses in my ‘40s when we left the wonders of California for sweet tea, okra, and equine “yard art” of Tennessee. Horses and writing mixed to create Horse Sluts. My political bent led me to craft an exposé on the brutal “training” of Big Lick TN Walking Horses. I still ride and explore the more humorous sides of aging and riding. A stickler for "writing worth reading,” I eschew self-conscious, wandering-lost writing. The books I recommended are well crafted.

Candace's book list on horse journeys not to be missed

Candace Wade Why did Candace love this book?

Timmons’s little treasure book is “Nuggets of truth for people who love horses... no matter what” (Bonnie Timmons quote). Hold Your Horses is a laugh at ourselves and the horses we love. We are exposed on her pages. Our goofs, gaffs, and trials are not easily explained to those who don’t kiss horse faces. Timmons’ book is a smile, a cringe, and an “I am not alone.” No arduous tome, each page of this little book is a quick elbow in our equine-loving ribs.

By Bonnie Timmons,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hold Your Horses as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A whimsical but honest look at the equestrian's life and world, and a gift idea for everyone girl or woman who loves horses.


Book cover of A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse

Tory Bilski Author Of Wild Horses of the Summer Sun: A Memoir of Iceland

From my list on memoirs by women who love horses.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a horse-crazy young girl whose passion for equines went dormant for 30 years. It reawakened when I turned 40, and I was again a lovelorn teenager, daydreaming about horses, plotting treks, swooning over the mere sight of an equine, even if it was online. One day in the late 90s at the dawn of the Google search engine, I happened upon a picture of a beauty, a dark horse with a thick mane blowing in the wind. It was an Icelandic horse, the photo taken on a misty green tussock in Iceland. That was it for me. I focused my equine passion (fair to call it an obsession) to that horse and that country.  

Tory's book list on memoirs by women who love horses

Tory Bilski Why did Tory love this book?

Nancy Marie Brown’s book came into my life at a most prescient time in my own horse history. I discovered her book at just the moment I was discovering this then rare breed, the Icelandic horse. In the late 1990s, Brown goes to Iceland searching for the perfect horse (gaedingur in Icelandic). The country was very different from the tourist magnet it is today. It was wilder, more isolated, less traveled. Brown is there in pursuit of a horse or two to bring home. She first arrives with her husband and eight-year-old son after a family trauma. They stay in a broken-down house, “a concrete box” without modern amenities. She tries her best to learn and converse in the native tongue with the local farmers. As she tests drive all the horses, the reader learns all about Icelandic horses and horse-buying. What adds such depth to this book is…

By Nancy Marie Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Good Horse Has No Color as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

After several visits to study the medieval Icelandic sagas, Nancy Marie Brown returns to Iceland to search for the perfect horse, one she can bring back to her Pennsylvania farm and make her own. She arrives shaken by tragedy, uncertain of the language, lacking confidence in her riding skills, but determined to make her search a success. She finds inspiration in the country’s austere and majestic landscape, which is alive with the ghosts of an adventure-filled past. In the glacier-carved hinterland, she rides a variety of Icelandic horses—some spirited, willful, even heroic; others docile, trusting, or tame. She also meets…


Book cover of The Walrus Mutterer

Nikki Marmery Author Of On Wilder Seas: The Woman on the Golden Hind

From my list on historical sea voyages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historical fiction writer living in a landlocked village in the Chilterns, UK. I became obsessed with long sea voyages while researching my debut novel, On Wilder Seas, which is inspired by the true story of Maria, the only woman aboard the Golden Hind during Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage in 1577-1580. I immersed myself in the literature of the sea, in early modern sailors’ accounts of their terrifying voyages, in their wills and diaries, in maps and sea-logs. A ship is the perfect setting for a novel: the confined space, the impossibility of escape, the ever-present danger – and the hostile, unforgiving sea is the ultimate antagonist.

Nikki's book list on historical sea voyages

Nikki Marmery Why did Nikki love this book?

In 325 BC, Pytheas of Massalia travelled to northern Britain and beyond, becoming the first writer to chronicle the midnight sun and describe the distant land of Thule (possibly Iceland). His account, On the Ocean, was lost to history and is now known only through references by other writers. But we do have The Walrus Mutterer, a brilliant fictionalization of those travels, to make up for it.

Rian is a young woman from the Scottish region of Assynt who is being trained as a healer when she is enslaved and forced to join Pytheas’s dangerous voyage of discovery. In poetic, lean prose, Haggith details Rian’s trials at sea, her endurance and strength, and the search for the eponymous walrus-hunter, which takes them into the far north.

The writing about the weather and landscape of this lost world is exquisite. The beliefs and practices of this distant way of…

By Mandy Haggith,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Walrus Mutterer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Northern Britain, Iron Age. Rian, a carefree young woman and promising apprentice healer, is enslaved by a spiteful trader and forced aboard a vessel to embark on a perilous sea voyage. They are in search of the fabled hunter known as the Walrus Mutterer, to recover something once stolen. The limits of Rian's endurance are tested not only by the cruelty of her captor, but their mysterious fellow passenger Pytheas The Greek - and the merciless sea that constantly endangers both their mission and their lives. A visceral evocation of ancient folklore and ritual, The Walrus Mutterer introduces an unforgettable…


Book cover of All the Horses of Iceland

Kate Heartfield Author Of The Valkyrie

From my list on transporting you to a foggy valley in medieval Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've always been fascinated by the way history feels inherently uncanny, as we inhabit the same places as people long dead. I suppose that’s why the novels I write tend to be in historical settings, and they tend to have a speculative twist. For much of my working life, I was a journalist, so I love the research part of writing historical fiction. I tend to be drawn to old stories, and I especially love looking at those stories from angles I haven't seen before. Two of my novels bookend the European Middle Ages: The Valkyrie, set in the 5th century CE, and The Chatelaine, set in the 14th century CE.

Kate's book list on transporting you to a foggy valley in medieval Europe

Kate Heartfield Why did Kate love this book?

This is a slim book and it's told in an intimate, lyrical voice that feels like it's speaking directly to you from the period – which, in this case, is the 9th century CE.

All the Horses of Iceland follows a Norse trader through Rus to Mongolia in the company of Khazars. It's a ghost story, with notes of sadness mixed with wonder. And while it is possible to trace the journey and pick up on historical signposts, the book doesn't acknowledge that it knows when and where its reader might be – which bolsters the illusion of reading something very old.

By Sarah Tolmie,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked All the Horses of Iceland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A hypnotic historical fantasy with gorgeous and unusual literary prose, from the captivating author of The Fourth Island.

Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of…


Book cover of Jar City

P.M. LaRose Author Of Beers on Ice

From my list on Scandinavian writers to get acquainted with.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been exploring Scandinavian authors for several years after working my way through the American masters of the genre (Chandler, McDonald, Parker, Burke, Stout, and others). For some reason, Scandinavians seem a lot more vicious in their writing, crafting murder scenes that are beyond gruesome. After reading the works of several Icelandic authors, I was inspired to go there and see firsthand what I was reading about, then to create my own mystery in that setting.

P.M.'s book list on Scandinavian writers to get acquainted with

P.M. LaRose Why did P.M. love this book?

Reykjavik Police Inspector Erlendur and his associate, Sigurdur Oli, are sent to investigate the murder of an old man bashed with an ashtray. They soon uncover his sordid past, in which he was accused of rape. Traipsing from clue to clue, interviewing tangential witnesses, they learn more about why he was killed and eventually discover the perpetrator, whose life was tragically altered by the actions of the murdered man. Erlendur and Oli are like the Odd Couple but complement each other in their work. The title refers to the practice of keeping organs in jars for medical research, which figures into the investigation. The journey to the solution of the case is very satisfying. 

By Arnaldur Indridason,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Jar City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An old man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat.

A cryptic note and a photograph of a young girl's grave are left behind.

DID THE DEAD MAN'S PAST COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM?

Inspector Erlendur discovers that several decades ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime. As he follows a fascinating trail of strange forensic evidence, Inspector Erlendur uncovers secrets that are much larger than the murder of one man - dark secrets that have been carefully guarded for many, many years...
'A fascinating window on an unfamiliar world as well as an original…


Book cover of The Sealwoman's Gift

Melanie Golding Author Of The Hidden

From my list on folklore of the sea.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love the idea that much of folklore is based on universal human stories that are still true today. Selkies may be mystical creatures but they are also women treated badly by men, then judged for their response by wider society. Because of this universality, as well as the compelling magical element, there are many modern novels that make use of selkie folklore, which in several ways shares roots with the folklore of mermaids. I’ve picked out a few that spoke to me. I hope many more readers will discover these sea-faring, shape-shifting, magic-realist tales.

Melanie's book list on folklore of the sea

Melanie Golding Why did Melanie love this book?

I love this book for many reasons. The Sealwoman is a passenger on the slave ship that takes our protagonist form her beloved homeland, and the ‘gift’ of the title is the story she tells of her shapeshifting roots. The voyage is hellish, and contains a terrifying birth scene among other unspeakable, unimaginable, only just survivable events. It’s based on a true story, which makes it all the more powerful, and it makes me wonder about the hidden truths in the folklore contained within it, especially the sealwoman’s story. 

By Sally Magnusson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Sealwoman's Gift as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A remarkable feat of imagination... I enjoyed and admired it in equal measure' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
'An extraordinarily immersive read, that emphasises the power of stories, examining themes of motherhood, identity, exile and freedom ... a journey that not only crosses continents, but encompasses tragedy and rich sensuality' Guardian
'A powerful tale of Barbary pirates ... richly imagined.' Sunday Times
'Engrossing' Sunday Express 'Fascinating ... a really, really good read' BBC R2 Book Club
'The best sort of historical novel.' Scotsman 'A lyrical tale' Stylist
'A poetic retelling of Icelandic history.' Daily Mail 'Compelling stuff' Good…


Book cover of The Little Book of the Icelanders: 50 Miniature Essays on the Quirks and Foibles of the Icelandic People

Michael Ridpath Author Of Where the Shadows Lie

From my list on to read if you want to understand Iceland.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 2009, when I decided to set a crime series in Iceland, I embarked on a decade of research into the country, its people, its literature, its culture, and its elves. I visited the country, I spoke to its inhabitants and I read books, lots of books – I couldn’t find an elf, but I was told where they live. I needed to understand its criminals, its victims, its police, and most of all my detective Magnus Jonson. These are the best books that helped me get to grips with Iceland.

Michael's book list on to read if you want to understand Iceland

Michael Ridpath Why did Michael love this book?

The Icelanders are remarkable people with some pretty strange habits. Optimistic, energetic, friendly in a very reserved way, armed with irony that can kill at ten metres, they do not fit the classic Scandinavian stereotype. Over the last decade, as I have researched Iceland for my various Magnus novels, the Icelandic-Canadian Alda has been my guide on all things Icelandic. She gets to the bottom of their quirks and foibles in this brilliant little book of fifty or so essays about the people who live on a treeless volcano with appalling weather. Very funny. Very illuminating.

By Alda Sigmundsdottir, Megan Herbert (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Little Book of the Icelanders as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

After more than 20 years away, Alda Sigmundsdottir returned to her native Iceland as a foreigner. With a native person's insight yet an outsider's perspective, Alda quickly set about dissecting the national psyche of the Icelanders.

This second edition, from 2018, contains new and updated chapters from the original edition, reflecting the changes in Icelandic society and among the Icelandic people since the book was first published in 2012.

Among the fascinating subjects broached in The Little Book of the Icelanders:
• The appalling driving habits of the Icelanders
• Naming conventions and customs
• The Icelanders’ profound fear of…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Iceland, insomnia, and horses?

Iceland 63 books
Insomnia 27 books
Horses 125 books