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Tabikat

Racing, secrets, loyalties and a horse with a hidden past.

About the book

Start the conversation

Tabikat opens Harriet Redfern’s Kat’s Gift series, bringing together National Hunt racing, long-buried secrets, the working out of a complex trap to dismantle an international crime syndicate and a cast of characters whose lives converge at Sampfield Grange.

For book clubs, Tabikat offers much more than a racing story. It is a novel about trust, friendship and the far-reaching consequences of events.

View the bookMeet Harriet Redfern

Themes

Ideas to explore

  • Standing up against evil and wrongdoing; how ordinary people do extraordinary things
  • Trust and loyalty
  • The culture of National Hunt racing
  • Past actions and present consequences

Discussion guide

Questions for your book club

Use these as a starting point, choose the ones that interest your group, or simply let the conversation go where the book takes you.

  1. Do you feel sympathetic to James Sampfield Peveril? What does he have in common with Eoghan Foley?
  2. How important is the racing world to the story: setting, subject or character in its own right?
  3. What does Sampfield Grange represent to the different people who arrive there? How does this affect the plot?
  4. How does knowledge of the past change the way we judge the characters in the present?
  5. Which relationship in the novel did you find most convincing, and why?
  6. Did the mystery around Tabikat change the way you regarded those who looked after the horse as the story developed?
  7. Which part of the novel would you most like to explore beyond the pages of the book?
  8. Would you continue with the Kat’s Gift series? What unresolved thread would you most want to follow?

Stories & extras

Beyond Tabikat

This section will grow into a collection of short pieces of 350–1,000 words exploring the people, places and events around Tabikat and the wider Kat’s Gift world. Each piece can stand alone here, and later be shared with Ambessa subscribers and through social media.

Places

Sampfield Grange

The imagined North Somerset training yard at the heart of Tabikat, rooted in the real routines and traditions of National Hunt racing.

Read the story →

Places

Ireland and the Past

The Irish connections that reach back through the story and help shape what happens decades later.

Places

The Canal du Midi

The seventeenth-century waterway that runs through the landscape of Tabikat and the later Kat’s Gift novels.

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For organisers

Reading this with a group?

Ambessa will be developing downloadable discussion material, background features and opportunities for book clubs to send in questions. Join the newsletter to hear when new resources and stories are published.

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