The winner of numerous awards in Australia, where he makes his home, Victor Kelleher writes for both juvenile and adult audiences. While younger fans enjoy the elements of fantasy, science-fiction, and high adventure to be found in such novels as The Hunting of Shadroth and Taronga, more mature readers are intrigued by the author's darker side, both through such futuristic fantasy as Kelleher's The Beast of Heaven and his contributions to the horror genre. "In fact," observed Steven Paulsen and Sean McMullen in their essay in St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, "Kelleher has never shied away from horror and terror, and there have been elements of it in his work since his early young-adult fantasy novels." Such early novels include The Hunting of Shadroth and The Green Piper, the latter which was cited by Paulsen and McMullen as "the first-ever Australian children's horror novel...