Eighty-Nine Questions for After

A wise and beautifully written middle-grade novel about finding answers to the big questions in life from popular children's author Ashleigh Barton.

Ester Star is a germophobe and hypochondriac and she's convinced she's going to die. To prepare for her imminent and inevitable demise, Ester keeps a list of all the questions she hopes to have answered in the afterlife - things she knows she'll never have the answers to during her lifetime. What really happened to the dinosaurs? Just how big is the universe? Are ghosts real? She's up to eighty-nine questions and counting.

When Ester's usual after-school sitters announce they are moving away, her mum comes up with an alternative arrangement that turns her world upside down. Every day after school, Ester is to spend her afternoons with Mum at work. At a hospice. Terrified of all the things she might catch at a hospice, Ester is anxious every second she's there.

But soon she meets Joan, an elderly lady who used to be in the circus. Joan tells Ester she doesn't believe in the afterlife, but she does have one question she'll regret never having answered while she's alive. Why did her sister disappear all those years ago, after they had been so close growing up in the circus together?

With the help of Peter, another kid who spends his afternoons at the hospice, and her new next-door neighbour, a tech whizz named Mackenzie, Ester sets out to have Joan's question answered.

Will Ester realise there's more to life than worrying about dying?

About the Author

Ashleigh Barton is a children's author and copywriter. Before writing full time, she pursued her love of books (children's books especially) by working in some of Australia's biggest publishing houses, running marketing and publicity campaigns for globally renowned authors and illustrators.

Ashleigh is the author of eight successful and highly acclaimed picture books and two junior fiction series, and has been recognised on the CBCA Notables and/or Shortlist in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her picture book Dinosaur in My Pocket was a 2025 CBCA Notable Book. In 2025 Ashleigh published her acclaimed middle grade fiction book How to Sail to Somewhere and her picture book Hedgehog or Echidna?. Ashleigh lives in Sydney with her husband, three children and their dog.