Not sure where to start?
Try one of our bestsellers … these are the books that have sold best over the past year, ranging from classics to brand-new reads.
There's Ruby Ferguson's Jill's Gymkhana. Wry and funny, Jill and her ponies enchant most people. If you're after a thoroughly believeable teenager, then there's For Love of a Horse, Patricia Leitch's first story of Jinny and her chestnut Arab mare, Shantih.
If you want to find out what happened to Jinny after the end of the series, Siân Shipley's Dream of the Dance, a sequel to the Jinny stories, has had rave review after rave review.
For older readers there's the eternally popular romance, horses and hunting you'll find in Christine Pullein-Thompson's The Impossible Horse.
Christmas reads
There’s something magical about a really good Christmas read.
Our newest Christmassy read is Christmas with the Rushbrokes by Caroline Akrill: romance, disaster, and a crumbling country house.
The wonderful All Change by Josephine Pullein-Thompson is the book to head for if you want Christmas as it was fifty years ago.
And for the true meaning of Christmas, Patricia Leitch’s Horse of Fire is always enchanting, as Shantih and Jinny find, for a few, their angel wings.
Collections
Collections are a great way to buy complete series of books. You'll save money over buying the books individually, and who doesn't like a complete set? They're available for all the series JBB do.
Illustrated books
Illustrated books make brilliant presents. Anne Bullen illustrations are universally loved, and you can also buy books by artists like Sheila Rose, Anne Gordon and Elisabeth Grant. Our illustrated paperback editions have all the original drawings, carefully restored.
Books to make you laugh
The Jill books have their own wry humour, and Patricia Leitch writes a brilliant funny pony story. Try her Pony Surprise, for Augustus the Highland with a mind of his own, and Cross-Country Pony, in which you'll meet Harold, who has one talent. Caroline Akrill's Fane sisters sparkle in her Eventers' series, and there are four books in that.
If your humour edges a bit darker, Patience McElwee’s three pony books are all well worth a read. She absolutely skewers Pony Club parents in Match Pair, and snobbery is her target in Dark Horse.
Follow-ons
JBB don't just do reprints .... Caroline Akrill has written a fourth part to her Eventer's series, and you can now find out what happened to Elaine and the Fane sisters in Courses for Horses. Then there's Jane Badger's Jill and the Lost Ponies, a follow-on to the Jill series. There's also the brilliant, best-selling Dream of the Dance from Sian Shipley, carrying on the Jinny series
Pony Club stories
The Pony Club has inspired stories for generations. There's Josephine Pullein-Thompson's classic Noel and Henry series, with five books of the Barsetshire Pony Club's adventures. The Woodbury Pony Club books by Josephine Pullein-Thompson are set in the 1980s. Absolutely authentic, with brilliant characters, and completely classic Pony Club throughout.
The Prince Philip Cup doesn’t get as much pony book action as you’d think, but Gillian Baxter’s 1963 book, The Team from Low Moor, puts that right.
Books for older readers
All these books feature characters who have left school (or are about to!)
Bobby, in Gillian Baxter's brilliant Bracken Stables series, wrestles with the demands of school and competing. In her Bargain Horses, Gemma contends with her horse-mad mother, as well as A levels.
Josephine Pullein-Thompson's Kate is at her first job in A Job with Horses.
Christine Pullein-Thompson's The Impossible Horse is one of our most popular books, combining rehabilitating a horse, romance, and hunting.
Caroline Akrill’s Christmas with the Rushbrokes (the new title for The Last Baronet) is our first book for adults. It’s a wild read.
Boys ride too
Here's a selection of books where boys are the main characters, or in equal numbers to girls.
The weather outside is frightful
But in pony book land it's summer, and time for adventure.
Try Josephine Pullein-Thompson's Moors series, where she swops the Pony Club world for adventure on the moors. Still plenty of ponies, of course.
Diana Pullein-Thompson wrote adventures too. Sandy and Fergus get a lot more than they bargained for on a trek in Ponies on the Trail.