Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (Faber and Faber, £7.99 in UK)

Jane Smiley helpfully starts this masterfully controlled book with a list of characters that includes a brief description of the real stars of her sprawling tale: the half dozen thoroughbreds whose lives set the pace for their owners and trainers. Even if the reader isn't a horsey person - and people are either horsey types or they're not - Smiley's enthusiasm for Justa Bob, Mr T and Epic Stream is infectious. Her humour emerges in her description of the owners, from the grotesque industrialist Al Maybrick to rapper Ho Ho Ice Chill, and in the uneasy relationship between these paymasters and their horses' breeders and trainers. At the core of the busy book is a life philosophy of Zen-like calm. If there's a gripe it is that sometimes one of the many characters frustratingly disappears for pages and pages as the action moves from California to Texas to New York and back again.