Annie Proulx and Bret Harte transport us to the ranches of the Old West and Rudyard Kipling to the polo fields of India. Arthur Conan Doyle makes a famous Thoroughbred disappear, and Raymond Carver gives us a vision of runaway horses in the mist. Jane Smiley, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Babel, and Ted Hughes explore the human passions horses can unleash. From the rollicking racetrack humor of Damon Runyon to the poignant lyricism of John Steinbeck's The Red Pony to the wild recklessness of adolescence in William Saroyan's The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse and Lydia Peelle's Sweethearts of the Rodeo, these stories testify to our varied and timeless fascination with the noble animal.