Rider in the Dark

Victoria Holmes was educated at Oxford, where she studied English. After working with horses for a year, and a brief stint teaching English, she worked as an editor for a school-based bookclub, and then went on to Working Partners, for whom she works as a commissioning editor. For HarperCollins she researched and wrote three historical horse books; according to an interview she gave to Writer Unboxed in 2006, a fourth book was commissioned, but this does not seem to have appeared. Critical opinion, according to the Wikipedia article cited below, was less positive with each book that appeared which perhaps explains the non-appearance of book four.

Her three historical novels cover different periods: 18th century smuggling, early 20th century identity confusion and Elizabethan Ireland in the aftermath of the Armada. Rider in the Dark I found more readable than Heart of Fire, but the author didn’t really persuade me to inhabit the books with her.

Finding the books
None of her titles were published in the UK, but are all readily available here.

Links and sources
I review two of the books here.
Victoria Holmes on Wikipedia
2006 Interview with Victoria Holmes: Writer Unboxed