Miss Chance

A wonderfully engaging novel about a man and the horse he falls in love with – the idiosyncratic Miss Chance.

‘Get a motorbike. Get laid. The order doesn’t matter.’

When teacher Mark Brown’s celebrated wife leaves him, his best friend Callum prescribes a swift return to adolescence.

Mark does indeed turn back the clock, but not towards motorbikes. He returns to his first passion – horses. Getting back into the swing of riding after twelve years, Mark begins to put together the broken pieces of a story that is full of humour, love and pain.

He is plunged back into contact with his extraordinary family and other flamboyant influences from his past. And over everything there is the shadow of his tantalising, enigmatic, beautiful and frustrating wife, Morgan.

Miss Chance is at once delicate and down-to-earth, funny and poignant, a beautifully told narrative that reveals itself with an increasing power and momentum.

Reviews

Praise for Rogue Lion Safaris:

‘Barnes has created a new category of adventure story, doing for safaris what Dick Francis has done for horse-racing, but better written’
The Times

‘An exceptionally good first novel’
Mail on Sunday

‘This novel is just about the next best thing to going on safari oneself, such is its evocation of place’
Oxford Times

‘It has the smell and feel of the bush… It is sad, it is true, and it is a good story’
The Spectator

About the author

Simon Barnes is an award-winning sports journalist (The Times, Spectator) and author of Horsesweat and Tears, as well as several books on wildlife and conservation.