The Lastling

By Victor Kelleher

Cover and internal illustrations by Lorena Carrington

ISBN: 9780648815488

220 pages, RRP $19.99

Trim size: 190x128mm

Category: Upper middle-grade fiction

Published May 2025 by Eagle Books, an imprint of Christmas Press

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.

About the author:

With many novels to his credit, Victor Kelleher has written successfully for both adults and for young people. Formerly an associate professor of English, he has long since devoted himself full-time to fiction. He is a past winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year Award, has twice received the CBCA Honour Award, and has either won or been short-listed for many other such prizes, including the Science Fiction Achievement Award and a short-listing for the Carnegie Medal.  He currently lives in Tasmania with his artist wife. A previous futuristic novel of Victor Kelleher’s with Eagle Books, Wanderer(2022) was shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, while his adventure novel set in paleolithic times, The Cave, was released by Eagle Books to great acclaim in 2024.

About the illustrator:

Lorena Carrington is an illustrator and writer with a background in fine arts, photography and design. She has worked on story collections, anthologies and picture books, and has also created a number of cover illustrations and designs. Her most recent book, Satin (with text by Sophie Masson) was published in 2023 by MidnightSun Publishing and received a Notable Books listing.Her first book as an author-illustrator, Leaf Letters, was published by Christmas Press in July 2024. Forthcoming in 2025 is The Giant (with text by Sophie Masson), to be published by MidnightSun Publishing. Lorena is the recipient of the 2020 Australian Fairy Tale Society award, for her ‘outstanding contribution to the field of Australian Fairy Tales’ and a May Gibbs Creative Time Fellowship in 2023.