Phoenix is the first book in the ‘Ride On’ series by KIMBERLY BRUBAKER BRADLEY, a fresh, exciting animal-kid story of Harper and her treasured horse Phoenix.

Read on for an extract.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Harper’s life just exploded. Her parents are getting a divorce and eleven-year-old Harper and her mother are starting again—in a cramped house, in a new town, where everything feels unfamiliar, including the riding stables next door. Harper has never been around horses before. And no, she does not want to learn to ride. Then a truck dumps a starved and neglected horse right in Harper’s yard.

One look at the horse’s huge eyes and skinny body and something inside Harper unlocks. She names the horse Phoenix, and she will not give up on him. Neither, it turns out, will Phoenix give up on her. Will this be Harper’s first step towards new friends? Towards riding?

Phoenix is for readers of the Pony Club Secrets series and anyone who loves horses.

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EXTRACT

ONE

Harper managed to keep it together until she saw the dead chickens. Dead chickens. At least half a dozen of them, hung from their feet on a clothesline, pegged out with clothespins of all things, behind an otherwise normal-looking brick farmhouse on the corner of the road. Why the chickens were the end of it for her, Harper didn’t know, but they were. She burst into sobs. Loud, ragged, heartbroken sobs.

It was not the first time she’d cried, but it felt like the first time, all over again.

Her mother saw the chickens too. Her pale face drained of what little colour it had. She pulled their car and the little U-Haul trailer they were towing to the side of the road.

Put the car in park. Wrapped her arms around Harper, rocked her back and forth. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said.

Harper tried to stop crying. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It’s my fault we came here,’ her mother said. ‘Maybe we should have stayed in Knoxville.’

‘No,’ Harper said. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt. ‘No.’ Though she’d never seen dead chickens in a yard in Knoxville.

Her mom took a deep breath. ‘I’m sure there’s a reason they’re on a clothesline. This is farm country, you know? Though technically we’re still inside the Sommer Springs city limits.’

Harper glanced out the side window at the chicken house. Other than the dead birds, it looked pretty normal. Flowers in a bed near the door, rockers on the porch, a chicken coop in the backyard – with plenty of squawking chickens still inside it. Harper felt sorry for them. Welcome to Sommer Springs, Tennessee, she thought, where chickens watch their friends die and wonder if they’re next! Her stomach flopped sideways.

They’d already driven through what passed as Sommer Springs’s downtown. It had been exactly six blocks long, without a highway or shopping centre or Starbucks in sight. Knoxville, where they’d come from, was a real city, a normal city where they’d lived in a normal subdivision among people who didn’t hang butchered birds in their yard for all the world to see.

Harper’s best friend, Cat, who had lived across the street from them in Knoxville, wouldn’t have cried over the dead chickens. She’d have made a joke, about chickens trapped in a chicken horror movie maybe, and probably it would have been funny, and Harper might even have laughed.

Harper and her mom had not only moved away from Knoxville. They had also, specifically, moved away from Cat – from Cat, Cat’s house, and especially Cat’s mom. And Harper’s dad. Nothing about Harper’s life felt normal now. She wondered if it ever would again.

‘This house we’re going to is temporary,’ her mother said, for maybe the fiftieth time. ‘Once all the papers are signed and the dust has cleared, we’ll buy a place, in a neighbourhood like before. I had to find somewhere to rent that would let us bring Harvey.’

In the back seat of their Hyundai, their dog, Harvey, heard his name. He lifted his head and thumped his tail. Harvey was a Great Pyrenees; he weighed more than Harper did.

They couldn’t have left Harvey behind. Harper swallowed and wiped her eyes again. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ said her mom. She took a deep breath. ‘It’s hard right now. We’ll get through it.’

It would be hard forever. It would never not be hard.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley grew up horse-obsessed in a tragically non-horsey family. When she was eighteen, she took the reins in her own hands and hasn’t stopped riding since.

Kim ran a pony club for kids in her home town – a big part of her inspiration for this series – all while writing Newbery Honor-winning novels The War That Saved My Life, The War I Finally Won and Night War. Kim is a fierce advocate for horses and the value of the human-horse connection. This is the horse-kid series of her heart.

Visit Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s website here.