I’m delighted to share some news — Wild Horses is now available internationally through Pilyara Press! It has a different cover from the Penguin Random House edition available in Australia and New Zealand, but it’s the same great story.
This book has always been close to my heart. When I first sat down to write it, I wanted to explore the way broken things — whether people or horses — can find healing through patience, care, and trust. At its core, Wild Horses concerns second chances. It’s about Christy, a drama teacher blindsided by scandal who seeks refuge at Currawong Creek, a horse therapy camp tucked away in the foothills of Queensland’s beautiful Bunya Mountains. It’s about Tyler, a celebrity chef desperate to reconnect with his teenage son. And it’s about Lofty, a wild ex-racehorse who learns, alongside the humans around him, that sometimes trust is worth the risk.
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This novel is also a tribute. The equine character of Lofty was inspired by a real horse of the same name — rescued from the knackery by my son Matt. The bond those two shared was extraordinary, and losing Lofty last year was heartbreaking. Writing him back into life on the page became my way of honouring his spirit. Knowing that readers around the world will meet Lofty in these pages feels wonderful. I’m sharing his memory more widely than I ever imagined possible.
One of the themes running through Wild Horses is mental health — how connection to animals, nature, and community can help us weather life’s storms. Horses, in particular, have a remarkable gift for honesty. They sense our emotions instantly, and they demand authenticity in return. You can’t fake calm with a horse; you have to find it. Spending time with them teaches patience, grounding, and trust — qualities that many of us crave in today’s fast-paced world.
When I look back at my own journey — from my years in law, to raising children on my own, to finally following my heart into writing and the bush — I see echoes of Christy’s resilience. Like her, I discovered that stepping into a new chapter can be daunting, but it can also be the very thing that saves you. So it feels especially fitting to celebrate this new beginning for Wild Horses. With the international edition, readers everywhere can now travel to Currawong Creek, breathe in the Darling Downs air, and ride alongside Christy, Tyler, Leo, and Lofty.
If you pick up this book, I hope you find in its pages a reminder that fresh starts are always possible, and that the most unexpected connections — whether with an animal or another person — can sometimes change everything.
Thank you, as always, for your support, for reading, and for sharing these stories with me.
With gratitude,
Jennifer Scoullar
Elisabeth has been an avid reader all her life. She dabbled in writing as a teenager, but gave it away to study music which has also been a lifelong passion. It is why musicians are often, but not always, her main characters. She plays clarinet in a community orchestra and loves getting back into regular practice and music making. Tai Chi is a part of Elisabeth’s life and has been since 1987. She and her husband travel a lot and she also plays tennis on a regular basis.
We lived next door to Monty, a race horse trainer, and I spent many happy hours hanging around the stables and probably annoying him. He taught me to ride and loaned me a pony called Midge, short for Midget, who I rode bareback everywhere. Later, as a teenager, I had a chestnut mare called Del, the result of a swap Dad did with Monty for a jersey cow. I’d ride her after school, and on weekends head off with a friend to explore the area or attend a pony club meet which involved our horses being floated across town. All those quiet dirt country roads we travelled on horseback, singing Beatle’s songs, laughing and gossiping about boys, are now long gone — tarred and filled with fast moving traffic.
I’m fortunate in that I’ve never been in the path of a raging fire although Canberra lost 503 homes, and four people died in the terrifying fires of January 2003. I’ll never forget the weird light, the smell, the smoke and the wind bringing charred leaves and twigs from kilometres away before the fire hit the suburbs on the far side of town from us. My suburb backs on to natural bushland and every summer we know the possibility is there.
My heroine Krista, although frightened and knowing she has to drive four horses to safety can’t leave without her little dog Lola, who has disappeared. Lola, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, has quite a role to play in the book.
overseas, my husband and I sometimes go horse riding and explore different landscapes. Here I am riding Carlos on Maui, which, on the south western coast inland behind Kaanapali is surprisingly scrubby, rocky and dry and very like parts of Australia. Carlos resembles Calypso Sun. He liked going backwards, however, and needed stern words to make him behave, whereas she would never do that.
I’d gone to the centre purely to research the process for my book but in a very short time found myself immersed in the sessions in a much more personal way. The small group session included a combination of talking to the practitioners, spending time purely in the presence of the horses – in this case, a small herd of magnificent Friesians – and then grooming and doing groundwork with a particular horse. This was followed by deep reflection on the process and the emotions it triggered. A huge part of the process – this form being equine-assisted learning rather than actual therapy – was to slow down, listen to both the horse and your own reaction and to take the time to truly connect in the moment. Dealing with my own grief after losing my closest friend wasn’t something I anticipated but those feelings decided they wanted out and while this sort of loss isn’t something you ever really recover from, working with the horses was a hugely cathartic, helpful experience
Today I’d like you to meet 
Today I’m introducing Aussie author Kim Kelly, who is also a widely respected book editor. Stories fill her everyday – most nights, too – and it’s love that fuels her intellectual engine. In fact, she takes love so seriously she once donated a kidney to her husband to prove it, and also to save his life! Over to Kim …
Beneath rich layers of basalt soil, these hills are full of gold, too, and the whisperings of history. Almost the minute I moved here, I knew I was going to have to write a goldrush tale, and so l did: Lady Bird & The Fox, published just last year, a very Australian wild west story of bushrangers, reckless riding, and a quest for a place to call home.
When Deano was surveying underground at Hill End, in the lonely, ghost-town high country north of Bathurst, he took me out along the original, crumbling bridle track in a four-wheel-drive that seemed almost as ancient as the towering range through which the old road snakes. Breathtaking. Terrifying. And it inspired another novel, Paper Daisies, set in that same country at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring some worse terrors that women in those days too often faced alone. But when the heroine of that story breaks into a sweat along that treacherous track, you’ll know there’s a bit of autobiographical detail going on there.
in history. From Henry Handel Richardson’s (yes she’s a woman) Fortunes Of Richard Mahoney, Nancy Cato’s All The Rivers Run through to Colleen McCullough’s Thorn Birds, the drama, difficulties and romance of the bush has long been the stuff of great narrative tales. And the tradition continues!