Jilly Cooper Books In Order

Rutshire Chronicles Books In Publication Order

  1. Riders (1985)
  2. Rivals / Players (1988)
  3. Polo (1991)
  4. The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (1993)
  5. Appassionata (1996)
  6. Score! (1998)
  7. Pandora (2002)
  8. Wicked! (2006)
  9. Jump! (2010)
  10. Mount! (2016)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Emily (1975)
  2. Bella (1976)
  3. Harriet (1976)
  4. Octavia (1977)
  5. Prudence (1978)
  6. Imogen (1978)
  7. Araminta’s Wedding: or A Fortune Secured: A Country House Extravaganza (1993)
  8. Forces Sweethearts (1994)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Lisa and Co (1981)

Picture Books In Publication Order

  1. Little Mabel (1980)
  2. Little Mabel’s Great Escape (1981)
  3. Little Mabel Wins (1982)
  4. Little Mabel Saves The Day (1985)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. How to Stay Married: User’s Guide to Wedlock (1970)
  2. Jolly Super: Collected Pieces (1970)
  3. Jolly Super Too (1973)
  4. Jolly Superlative (1975)
  5. Super Men & Super Women (1976)
  6. Superjilly (1977)
  7. Supercooper (1980)
  8. Intelligent and Loyal (1981)
  9. Class (1981)
  10. The British in Love (1981)
  11. Love and Other Heartaches (1981)
  12. Beyond Bartlett (1982)
  13. Jolly Marsupial: Down Under and Other Scenes (1982)
  14. Animals In War (1983)
  15. Leo and Jilly Cooper on Rugby (1984)
  16. On Cricket (1985)
  17. Hotfoot To Zabriskie Point (1985)
  18. Horse Mania! (1986)
  19. How to Survive Christmas (1986)
  20. Turn Right At The Spotted Dog (1987)
  21. How to Survive from Nine to Five (1988)
  22. Angels Rush In: The Best of Jilly Cooper’s Satire and Humour (1990)
  23. Mongrel Magic (1992)
  24. Women And Super Women (1992)
  25. The Common Years (1994)
  26. Between the Covers (2020)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Violets and Vinegar: Beyond Bartlett, Quotations by and About Women (1980)

Rutshire Chronicles Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Picture Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Jilly Cooper Books Overview

Riders

From the queen of the British bestseller lists comes the classic hit every Englishwoman remembers with a sigh Riders, the steamy, scandalous tale of sexual and equestrian competition within the heroic world of international show jumping.

Welcome to a world of cutthroat competition populated by fearless athletes, wealthy sponsors, and beautiful starlets and set against the glorious Cotswold countryside and the playgrounds of the world. Within this arena we meet the brooding gypsy Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands the most difficult horse or woman becomes biddable, who is driven by his hatred of Rupert Campbell Black, the handsome and supremely confident star of the show ring. They steal each other’s horses and love each other’s women as they push themselves and their mounts to impossible extremes, until their feud erupts, with devastating consequences, at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Rivals / Players

One of the glorious Rutshire Chronicles. Into the cut throat world of Corinium television comes Declan O Hara, a mega star of great glamour and integrity with a radiant feckless wife, a handsome son and two ravishing teenage daughters. Living rather too closely across the valley is Rupert Campbell Black, divorced and as dissolute as ever, and now the Tory Minister for Sport. Declan needs only a few days at Corinium to realize that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, is a crook who has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous but domineering woman executive, to produce Declan’s programme. Declan and Cameron detest each other, provoking a storm of controversy into which Rupert plunges with his usual abandon. As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered, and sex raises its delicious head at almost every throw as, in bed and boardroom, the race is on to capture the Cotswold Crown.

Polo

In Jilly Cooper’s third Rutshire chronicle, we meet Ricky France-Lynch, who is moody, macho, and magnificent. He had a large crumbling estate, a nine-goal polo handicap, and a beautiful wife who was fair game for anyone with a cheque book. He also had the adoration of fourteen-year-old Perdita MacLeod. Perdita couldn’t wait to leave her dreary school and become a polo player. The polo set were ritzy, wild, and gloriously promiscuous. Perdita thought she’d get along with them very well. But before she had time to grow up, Ricky’s life exploded into tragedy, and Perdita turned into a brat who loved only her horses – and Ricky France-Lynch. Ricky’s obsession to win back his wife, and Perdita’s to win both Ricky and a place as a top class polo player, take the reader on a wildly exciting journey – to the estancias of Argentina, to Palm Beach and Deauville, and on to the royal polo fields of England and the glamorous pitches of California where the most heroic battle of all is destined to be fought – a match that is about far more than just the winning of a huge silver cup…

Score!

Sir Roberto Rannaldini, the most successful but detested conductor in the world, had two ambitions: to seduce his ravishing nineteen year old stepdaughter, Tabitha CampbellBlack, and to put his mark on musical history by making the definitive film of Verdi’s darkest opera, Don Carlos. To achieve the latter, he enlists the help of his charismatic French godson, Tristan de Montigny, the hottest director in Europe, who is capable of coaxing magical performances out of the most wayward and wooden prima donnas. As Rannaldini, Tristan and the entire cast, headed by Rannaldini’s capricious mistress, Hermione Harefield, demand total artistic control, the recording is stormy. But nothing compares to the ructions that occur when filming begins in Rannaldini’s heavily haunted fourteenth century abbey. To disgruntled spooks, temperamental singers and histrionic set designers is added a glamorous but bolshy French film crew determined to pull everything in sight, particularly the tempestuous Tabitha, now employed as Mistress of the Horse. All the women and several of the men are determined to pull Tristan. To their disappointment, he is interested only in keeping the movie on track. But as he battles to boost the morale Rannaldini is hell bent on destroying, Tristan finds himself increasingly drawn to Tabitha which Rannaldini will not tolerate. Then the news leaks out that Rannaldini is writing his memoirs, revealing dreadful secrets about everyone, and his fate is sealed. But as Rutshire CID and the world’s press pour in, doubts grow that Rannaldini is really dead. Or is it his ghost stalking the abbey cloisters in outrage that his arch enemy, the tone deaf Rupert Campbell Black, has taken over as executive producer? Terrifyingly creepy, by turns wildly funny and unashamedly romantic, Score! is Jilly Cooper’s most thrilling novel to date. But it is also a story, like Don Carlos, about loneliness in high places, and heroism and passionate love triumphing against the odds.

Pandora

A novel about love, high living, intrigue and a missing painting.

Raymond Kelvedon had been a dashing subaltern in 1944 when he had come across the glorious painting by Raphael depicting Pandora releasing the seven deadly sins into the world. The painting ended up on the bedroom wall of his beautiful home, Foxes Court, in the peaceful county of Larkshire. His tempestuous wife, Galina, entertained her lovers there as well as giving birth to her four children beneath its watchful gaze, but after her tragic and mysterious death, Raymond kept the painting hidden away in a tower room, its existence forgotten by most of those who ever knew about it.

Now, Raymond has a gallery, a new wife and adorable young twins, as well as his four grown children. Then into all their lives erupts Emerald lovely, talented and desperately searching for her real parents. Zach Ansteig, an attractive and mysterious American encourages her to go to Foxes Court where, he persuades her, her birth mother will be found. The Kelvedon family is outraged. But Zach is also searching for something the Raphael Pandora, which he believes should belong to him.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Wicked!

Britain’s number one bestselling author turns her brilliant pen to the explosive world of education.

Two schools, both in leafy Larkminster, but worlds apart, are turned upside down when the ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster of fashionable Bagley Hall, Hengist Brett Taylor, hatches a plan to share the highly superior facilities of his school with the students at Larkminster Comprehensive. His reasons for doing so are purely financial but he is also encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the young, pretty and enthusiastic new principal of the comprehensive school. The determined Janna has been drafted in to save what is a fast sinking school from closure, and she will do anything to rescue her run down, demoralized and cash strapped school.

The parents of Bagley Hall s rich and pampered children are none too keen on this radical move, but the students see it as a great opportunity to get up to even more mayhem than usual. And for the pupils at the comprehensive school, many of them struggling with appalling home backgrounds, violence and lack of any parental support problems which are not unknown to some of the Bagley Hall pupils mixing with the posh school up the road is often a mixed blessing.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Jump!

Etta Bancroft sweet, kind, beautiful adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high handed owner trainer Rupert Campbell Black. When her bullying husband dies, Etta’s selfish, ambitious son and daughter drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood and act as unpaid Nanny to their children. Her neighbour, powerful tycoon and ex footballer Valent Edwards, has bought the big house next door. One night Etta finds a horribly mutilated filly in the snow in Valent’s woods, and persuades the outraged Valent to take her in. Miraculously she pulls through, and by now called Mrs Wilkinson, captivates everyone in the village. Tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well bred racehorse. After a nail biting court case, Mrs Wilkinson is awarded to Etta, thus ensuring the lasting and vengeful enmity of her evil former trainer and owner. Etta forms a village syndicate to put the filly into training. The syndicate is a riotous mix of village characters, who set off to the races in a minibus clanking with bottles. From wild parties at Newbury and Ludlow, to an overnight of musical beds at Stratford, to the thrills and spills of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, one fling leads to another and another. Mrs Wilkinson becomes a star nicknamed the People’s Pony. She is beloved by the crowds as she progresses from point to points to the major meetings and brings fame and fortune to the syndicate. After her terrible injuries she will only run for a female jockey, giving the delectable Amber Lloyd Foxe, Rupert’s god daughter, her big breakthrough in the man’s world of racing. But Etta is horrified when Valent cooks up a plot with Rupert to enter Mrs Wilkinson for the Grand National. Can she be the first mare in thirty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to conquer this mighty race?In Jump! you will meet rich capricious owners, obsessive trainers and gallant stable lads and las*ses; you will get to know the tough, brave jockeys; and you will fall in love with the horses,and above all with Mrs Wilkinson herself hilarious, heroic and so gutsy she will gallop into your heart forever.

Emily

TWO WITTY AND WONDERFUL TALES BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SCORE Emily If Emily hadn’t gone, alone, to Annie’s party even though she was engaged to Cedric she would never have met the devastating Rory Balniel, never have married him, gone to live on his ancestral Scottish island, picked roses in a see through nightie, and generally had a wildly confusing, erratic, and sometimes erotic, time. And it all began with Annie’s party. BELLA Bella was the most promising young actress in London. The dashingly handsome Rupert Henriques couldn’t wait to marry her. But Bella had a secret in her past and the one man who was aware of it was trying to prevent her marriage. Before she knew where she was, sexy and hopelessly scatter brained Bella found herself in real danger.

Bella

There was no doubt about it Bella Parkinson was the most promising actress and a success. Rupert Henriques was rich enough to buy her every theatre in London if she wanted it and couldn t wait to marry her. But Bella had a secret in her past and the one man who knew it was about to come into her life again. Soon she found herself in real danger…

Harriet

Shy, dreamy, and incurably romantic, Harriet Poole was shattered when her brief affair with Simon Villiers, Oxford’s leading playboy undergraduate, ended abruptly, leaving her penniless, alone and pregnant. She becomes a nanny to the children of an eccentric scriptwriter and a whole host of visitors begin to arrive to disrupt her routine including of all people, Simon.

Octavia

As soon as Octavia caught a glimpse of Jeremy in the nightclub, she knew she just had to have him. It didn t matter that he was engaged to an old school friend of hers, Gussie. An invitation to join them on a cozy weekend is the perfect opportunity. But the the whizz kid business tycoon Gareth Llewellyn come along too and manages to thwart her plans…

Prudence

The trouble with the Mulholland family, Prudence decided, was that they were all in love with the wrong people. She had been overjoyed when Pendle, her barrister boyfriend invited her home for the weekend to meet his family. It soon began to dawn on Prudence that there was more to this weekend than met the eye…

Lisa and Co

Lisa and Co is a sparkling collection of love stories that are both moving and funny and could only have been written by the unique Jilly Cooper. We meet a host of devastating girls, falling in and out of love, finding, losing and often finding again sometimes in the most unexpected places the men of their dreams.

Class

The English have been and always will be obsessed by Class, even though they may not realize it. And Jilly Cooper has put an accurate, acerbic, and wickedly funny finger on the idiosyncracies of the English at home, whether it be in their castles, their nice villas in Weybridge, or in their high rise council flats. In Class we study the peculiar habits and mores of all Classes at play, at school, at work, during courtship and marriage rituals, even the way they dress, eat, and conduct their sex lives.

Here we have Harry and Caroline Stow Crat who love their dogs more than each other, Gideon and Samantha Upward who drink too much and are always in respectable middle Class debt, and here, too, are the wonderful Nouveau Richards, whose luxury homes are in execrable taste but blissfully comforatble with their chandeliers in the loo.

Animals In War

Pigeons carrying vital messages to and from the beleaguered city during the Siege of Paris; horses and mules struggling through miles of fetid mud to bring ammunition to the front in the Great War; dogs sniffing out mines for the British invasion force in the Second World War countless brave animals have played their part in the long, cruel history of war. Some have won medals for gallantry like G.I. Joe, the American pigeon who saved 100 British lives in Italy, and Rob, the black and white mongrel who made over twenty parachute jumps with the SAS. Too many others have died abandoned, in agony and alone, after serving their country with distinction. Jilly Cooper has here written a tribute to the role of Animals In Wartime. It is a tragic and horrifying story yet it has its lighter moments too: a hilarious game of musical chairs played on camels during the Desert Campaign; and the budgie who remarked, when carried from a bombed out East End tenement, ‘This is my night out’. Re published to coincide with the launch of The Animals In War Memorial Fund, this is a vivid and unforgettable record of man’s inhumanity to animals, but also an astonishing story of courage, intelligence, devotion and resilience.

The Common Years

During the ten years she lived at the edge of Putney Common Jilly Cooper walked daily on this expanse of green. For most of the time she lived there she kept a diary, noting the effects of the changing seasons and writing about her encounters with dogs and humans. The book is a distillation of those diaries:an affectionate and enthralling and enthralling portrait warts and all of life on Putney Common. Never has Jilly Cooper written more lyrically about flowers, trees, birds and the natural world; more tellingly about the sorrows as well as the joys of caring for dogs and children; or more outrageously about the gossip, illicit romances and jealousies of life in a small community.

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