A canter through some outstanding new publications especially relevant in this, the year of the horse.

Over this year of the horse (马年) the publishing industry has rightly and naturally trotted out a band of horsey books across fiction and non-fiction. The horse has always inspired the human imagination: from early rock paintings to Black Beauty to poor old Artax in the Neverending Story. But what is the horse, really? What does the great four-legged, hoofed, maned and tailed creature offer to us humans? And what do we give to them? One the one hand there’s companionship, transport and recreation; and on the other an example of existing out there in the darkening yonder, bucking and galloping, untamed and free. The horse has long been central and symbolic to our stories and our lives – it’s no wonder they are still fascinating writers today.

Here are six books of the equine variety published in 2026:

Horses & Us: True Stories of Horses and Their Humans by Johanna Emeney

Poet Johanna Emeney collaborated with a raft of illustrators to tell the story of people and their horses. Emeney starts with her own favourite horsey guy, Amazing Blazing Billy, who she met when he was 19 years old: “It was love at first sit”. Billy sounds like a proper gent, never nipping, placing his feet carefully so as not to tread on a foot. It makes for emotional reading: a reminder that humans and horses can be close friends, mutually respectful and loving. The book is a testament to these bonds and also to horses and creativity: the gorgeous illustrations that accompany each story call back to those early cave drawings and the ancient lineage forged by the earliest people and the ponies that meant so much to them. A beautiful book aimed at younger readers and their older friends, too.

It Gets In Your Blood by Marty Smith

Marty Smith is a chronicler of our times. Her vivid essays capturing the catastrophic Hawke’s Bay floods in 2023 are tender, shocking, funny, essential. In It Gets In Your Blood Smith chronicles the life that sustains the Hastings Racecourse. Written in diary form across 10 years, it’s a thrilling insight into the peculiarities of horse racing: the people, the animals, the politics. I know next to nothing about horse racing but Smith’s reportage took me right in, up close until by the end I felt sure I’d been there, watching over the state of the track, worrying over the NZTR decisions as the jockeys led their horses over the Crossing. Smith has a poet’s hand, too: glorious writing all around, like this: “The cloud has full cover now; puffy little bruises darken the sky, and maybe it will rain after all.” Read an excerpt from It Gets In Your Blood on The Spinoff, here.

Perfectly Themselves: Horses in the Human World by Abby Letteri

What does domestication do to the horse? This is the question at the heart of this handsome hardback. Letteri’s sweeping memoir takes us all around the world to observes horses in the wild: how they behave, how they are without human interference. All the way through, though, Letteri is there recalling her own relationships with horses, with the idea and history and art of them as much as with individual animals. The memoir chapters are short, sometimes even fragments, giving an impression of someone whose creative mind is deeply intertwined with the subject of person and horse, human and the wild elements of our world. It’s a beautiful book and one perfect for gifting to anyone interested in creative non-fiction, and in horses.

Wild Horses of the Last Land by Wayne Linklater

Kaimanawa horses are Aotearoa’s very own wild ones. In this hefty book Linklater covers the years he spent studying the horses in the tussock land of Waiouru and how witnessing their behaviours changed his approach to ecology and conversation. Like Letteri, Linklater roams from Aoteaora to other places and times in search of the wild horse and their placed in the world. Wild Horse of the Last Land is more science focussed than Letteri’s and reminds me of the work of the late, great Neville Peat. This is a book for anyone interested in philosophies of conservation, in nature writing and in Aotearoa’s own wild horses.

Song of the Saltings by Rachael King

And cantering now into fiction! Rachael King has carved out a space for herself as the author of horse girl folk horror. Her novel The Grimmelings about a fearsome selkie (a brilliantly terrible horse-like creature who enjoys a diet of humans) is a bestseller, captivating kids and adults all over the world. Her YA novel, Song of the Saltings is a ripper of a story set on the island of Brack among salt marshes and tweed and villages. The island sacrifices horses to resident monster the Glimm… But is another monster lurking? This is an unputdownable thriller that looks to ancient storytelling and the mysteries that lie in the land and in its people. Perfect for those who like their horses with a side of adventure, magic and horror.

The Witches of Winderry Spires by Karen Foxlee

Karen Foxlee is a writer from over the ditch in Australia and her latest novel is coming out on September 29. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy and can report that it is utterly delightful. Lucy Broadmeadow is summoned to go and live in the Clock Tower owned and operated by the Ticking Witch. Only when she arrives there’s no sign of the witch herself, only a somewhat reticent flying horse called Mustard and a shy little dragon called Sig. This is fantasy of the highest order: robust characters, a superb plot, comedy and heart. Perfect for readers aged eight and up, including jaded adults who are wrestling with the passing of time…