Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

[Polgara]

It was one of my favorite reads last year, I think it did a great job portraying the dark, seedy part of circus life and yet it still managed to show the pull that it can have.
I thought the author did a great job with the characters, the setting and as Poppy said telling it from a male point of view, had she used just her initials instead I may not of guess it was a woman.
I want to read her other book Riding Lessons, about a teenage girl and her horse training for equestrian jumping in the Olympics, that has an accident (it looks as if she has two books about the same character/them because the other Flying Changes had much the same description as Riding Lessons. Has anyone read either of these or know if one is a sequel?).
I saw she has a new book coming out in I think 2009 called Ape House while I was on Amazon too, but there was no description yet..