Announcing the acquisition of a fabulous adventure novel by Brenton Cullen!

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Christmas Press is delighted to announce that we have acquired world rights in The Secret of Panther Valley, a gripping mystery/adventure novel for middle-grade readers by talented author Brenton Cullen. The novel will be published in April/May 2027 under the Eagle Books imprint and was acquired via Debbie Golvan of Golvan Arts Management.

Christmas Press publishing director Sophie Masson said, ‘We are delighted to be publishing  Brenton’s wonderfully pacy and intriguing novel, which richly conveys the atmosphere of the bush as well as being a fantastic adventure. With engaging characters, a deftly-woven mystery and a vividly-evoked setting, this is a novel that will have readers on the edge of their seats.’

While staying at his grandmother’s farm with his cousin Coby, mystery-loving 13-year-old Seamus learns the local legend of a panther stalking the region but his search for the truth turns to disaster when he finds himself alone, lost in a secret valley and hunted by a ruthless pair of men posing as documentary film-makers. He will need all his resolve, wits and courage to get out of the desperate situation he’s in, but in the process he uncovers a secret hidden for decades, and discovers a most unexpected and enigmatic ally…

Brenton Cullen explains the genesis of the novel: ‘The Secret of Panther Valley is an ode to the excitement of a country childhood and the secrets the Australian bush can hold. I grew up on farms that stretched for hundreds of acres, where I was always exploring the bush and creeks beyond our house and imagining adventures. I was fascinated by mysteries  — especially the legend of the black panther said to roam the Blue Mountains. I often wondered what hidden creatures might be out there in the bush. When I was ten, I had a dream in which I was standing at our back door, watching in shock as a sleek panther crept past in front of me. That image has stayed with me. The Secret of Panther Valley grew from my adventures and that dream. I’m absolutely delighted that Eagle Books will be bringing this story to readers.’

Brenton Cullen is a fantastic new writer whose first middle-grade novel, The Prime Minister Problem, will be published by Riveted Press in April 2026. He has also written for magazines including Magpies and Books+Publishing, and was the recipient of the Ian Wilson Memorial Fellowship in 2023. We are delighted to welcome Brenton to the Eagle Books list!

Fabulous advance review for Life and Breath

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There’s a fabulous advance review by Anneliese Gates in Books+Publishing of our forthcoming title, Ursula Dubosarsky’s wonderful collection of short stories, Life and Breath.

Here’s a short extract from the review:

By weaving together the everyday and the fantastical, the collection never falls into the predictable, and each short story leaves its own impression.

If you are a Books+Publishing subscriber, you can read the whole review here.

Life and Breath is out in March in Australia with Eagle Books, and simultaneously in the UK with Roffo Court Press.

Cover reveal for Life and Breath!

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Eagle Books and Roffo Court Press are delighted to reveal the stunning cover, created by Susie Jenkin-Pearce, for our fantastic forthcoming title, Life and Breath: Stories, by multi-award winning author, Ursula Dubosarsky. Isn’t it just beautiful!

Life and Breath, a collection of Ursula’s extraordinary short stories for young people never before published in one volume, will be published simultaneously in Australia by Eagle Books and Great Britain by Roffo Court Press on March 1st. Look out for it in every good bookshop in both countries!

Announcing the acquisition of Only the Wild, by Victor Kelleher

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Christmas Press is delighted to announce that we have acquired world rights in Only the Wild, a brilliant new novel for upper middle-grade/YA readers by multi-award-winning author Victor Kelleher. The novel will be published in September 2026 under the Eagle Books imprint and was acquired via Margaret Connolly of Margaret Connolly and Associates.

Christmas Press publishing director Sophie Masson said, ‘We are proud to have published three of Victor’s novels already, Wanderer (2022) The Cave (2024) and The Lastling (2025) and are thrilled to have acquired this extraordinary new novel from one of Australia’s greatest writers for children, whose brilliant work continues to enthral readers and to break new ground. In Only the Wild, Victor has created a reimagined future Antarctica, or ‘Great Southland’, where a vicious war is raging between fiercely determined clans of small farmers and a ferocious band of eco-warriors called the Wilders, whose aim is to eradicate all human presence in the Great Southland and return it to wilderness. Only the Wild is a brilliant mix of exciting adventure and thought-provoking themes, which raises many timely questions.’

An intriguing timeline introduces us to what brought history to this pass, and then the reader is plunged straight into the precarious world of Evan, son of a farming family, who dreams of finding a middle way between the warring factions, an unpopular idea on both sides which will lead him into great danger. After rescuing Emmy, a little girl who’s the sole survivor of an attack on a neighbouring family, he is confronted by a Wilder, a ruthless young woman named Reyne, and only just manages to escape with the child. But now Reyne is on his trail…and what happens next will set the scene for an extraordinary chain of events that will reach across time to change the fate of the Great Southland.

Victor Kelleher explains: ‘More than anything else, it was my long interest in the Rewilding movement that inspired me to write Only the Wild. In particular, I was drawn in by the ongoing debates. Should a rewilded area exclude humans? Or include them? If you’re going to argue the merits of re-introducing species such as wolves and bears and big cats, how can you in all conscience exclude us, the top predator? Ah, say the opponents of that view, humans are a special case: they’re the ones who destroyed wilderness in the first place. And so the arguments go on and on. Rather than join in, I set out to write a novel that embodied the very spirit of such disputes, imagining a future reforested Antarctica, completely free of ice, fought over by rival groups: farmers, and the Wilders. And then there’s Evan, who sees this great southland as his home, as long as he is prepared to live in tune with nature. This three-part struggle, and its resolution, is at the heart of the novel.’

Announcing the joint acquisition of a fantastic Ursula Dubosarsky collection!

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Eagle Books (an imprint of Christmas Press) and Roffo Court Press (UK) are proud to announce that we have jointly acquired world rights in Life and Breath, a brilliant collection of short stories for upper middle-grade/YA readers by multi-award-winning author Ursula Dubosarsky. In a unique event, Life and Breath will be simultaneously published, in separate editions, in Australia and the UK in March 2026.

Discoveries from the past, hopes for the future – and the decisions we make on a knife edge that clarify our own sense of self. These elements inform Ursula Dubosarsky’s multi-award-winning novels and are in sharp, bright evidence in these thirteen beautifully crafted short stories, by turns poignant, funny, reflective and joyful – nearly always mercurial – previously published in anthologies and magazines but collected together for the very first time. Ursula Dubosarsky has written brand-new notes on the origins of each story.

Christmas Press publishing director Sophie Masson said, ‘This is such a special book, in so many ways—not only is it Ursula’s first collection of short stories and her first book for older readers in a while, but its publication is also the fruit of a decades-long friendship between Ursula, Jon Appleton of Roffo Court Press, and myself. At Christmas Press, we’ve previously published two of Ursula’s other books, Two Tales of Twins from Ancient Greece and Rome (illustrated by David Allan, 2014) and The Boy who Could Fly and other Magical Plays for Children (illustrated by Amy Golbach, 2019) and we are absolutely delighted to be collaborating with Ursula and Jon at Roffo Court Press on this wonderful book.’

Jon Appleton, publisher at Roffo Court Press, said, ‘A highlight of working in publishing is producing books you most want to read. I knew Ursula Dubosarsky’s short stories would be mini gems, as indeed her novels are, and so deserving to be united between covers in a brand-new publication, full of vitality and originality. It’s been exciting and rewarding working with Ursula and Sophie to bring this glorious book into being.’

Ursula Dubosarsky reflects on the book’s genesis: ‘It’s an uncanny feeling to look back over your writing life over a period of nearly 40 years. All these stories were written at very different times, for me, for publishing, for Australia and for the world. And yet, there it is, through them all, that continuous thread of something unmistakably me that’s been in my writing since childhood. I can hardly define what that something is – the writing “me”, I suppose it must be. Gathering the stories together has been like collating photographs together in an album, with all the mystery of your past, present and even future selves between the covers. I’m completely thrilled by this project – Jon, Sophie and I have known each other through all those years, warmly bonded by sincere friendship and a commitment to writing, especially writing for children and adolescents. I remember once my mother saying to me, “Ursula, someone should collect your short stories together in a book.” Well, now someone has, and I couldn’t be more grateful or honoured.’

A news article about it appeared in Books+Publishing yesterday.

Publication day for The Lastling

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Today is the publication day for our latest Eagle Books title, Victor Kelleher’s marvellous new science fiction adventure novel, The Lastling!

It’s the third Victor Kelleher title which we’ve had the pleasure and privilege of publishing, and like its predecessors, Wanderer (2023) and The Cave (2024) it’s absolutely brilliant–exciting, moving and thought-provoking, and we are thrilled to be publishing it. It’s a gorgeous production too, with striking cover and internal illustrations by Lorena Carrington, and elegant design by Authors’ Elves.

With its Android and human protagonists, The Lastling is both an extraordinary adventure set in a disturbing future, and also a timely and thought-provoking exploration of what it really means to be human.

Here’s Victor on what inspired the novel: Artificial intelligence, robotics, and the whole notion of the android have been much in the news recently, and rightly so, in light of current technology. Yet underlying this interest is a much longer-standing issue: will AI be friendly to us, or will it threaten our human world? Many novels and films have offered an answer to this question. Some, like the film Terminator, give us two possible answers – AI as both friend and mortal enemy.  So what does The Lastling add to this debate? At one level, like Terminator, it gives two answers, in the forbidding person of Brother John and the gentle figure of Guido. However, it also poses deeper questions. How does an android as gentle as Guido survive in the face of both AI and human aggression? How does he interact with someone as deeply human as Verne? And how does he out-think his own programming? Is such independence on his part even possible? And if so, is he, in some profound sense, also human? Now there’s a scary thought! And it’s that scary thought, more than any other, that inspired me to write this novel.

Congratulations to Victor on a wonderful novel which we are sure is just going to fly into the hands of eager readers!

Cover reveal for The Lastling!

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We are delighted to reveal the fabulous cover for our forthcoming (May) title, The Lastling, Victor Kelleher’s amazing new science fiction novel for upper middle-grade readers. Isn’t it gorgeous! The cover illustration and design is by the wonderful Lorena Carrington, who has illustrated all the covers of the Victor Kelleher titles which we have had the privilege of publishing (the others being Wanderer and The Cave).

Here’s a bit about the book:

It’s a day like any other for Guido, performing his usual duties as a Droid guide in the Wilderness Park, until he receives a shocking warning: human Enforcers are about to eliminate him and all his fellow Droids, on the orders of the supreme leader, Brother John. Desperate to escape, he does a forbidden thing and disobeys a direct order. And that sets in train a chain of consequences that will reach over the years to a human girl named Verne, who’s been hired to break into the home of an old Enforcer and retrieve a mysterious weapon…

What happens next will set both Verne and Guido on the path to discovering the dangerous truth about the world they thought they knew–and forge unexpected bonds between them.

An extraordinary, gripping adventure set in a disturbing future, The Lastling is also a thoughtful, timely exploration of what it means to be human.

Publication day for The Cave!

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Today is publication day for The Cave, Victor Kelleher’s fabulous new novel. Set in a richly-recreated Paleolithic past, The Cave is both an extraordinary adventure and a moving exploration of loss, survival and courage. This is the second fantastic new Victor Kelleher novel that we have published, after Wanderer (2022) which was shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. We are thrilled to be bringing it to readers, and warmly congratulate Victor on another brilliant book!

Cover and internal illustrations by Lorena Carrington.

You can watch a trailer for The Cave here.