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.’