Sudden and savage came the Nargun's cry, bellowing down from the mountain, full of all time and the darkness between the stars. It held them at the door where it rang between mountains and died away. Charlie pushed Simon inside the door. 'We made it angry,' whispered Simon.' When Simon Brent's parents are killed in a car accident he is taken to live with his mother's cousins, Edie and Charlie, on Wongadilla, their 5000 acre sheep station in the Hunter Valley. Simon, with his city attitudes, feels like an outsider. But Simon is not the only thing that doesn't belong. The arrival of heavy machinery intent on clearing the land brings to life the Nargun, a great rock, older than time itself, that has slowly dragged itself into the valley - and with it, a simmering rage that drives it to kill. Steeped in mythology, The Nargun and the Stars evokes an image of this land and its people, and carries an environmental message as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.

Andy Hoddel was different from other boys. He never really understood the game they played, in which they 'owned' the factories, the library and the police station in their town, but he longed to tell them he owned something too.Then he met an old tramp and paid him three dollars for Beecham Park Racecourse.When Andy's friends find out they are horrified. Andy would have to be told he'd been taken for a ride. But how could they tell him without breaking his heart, especially when all the staff at the racecourse were calling him the 'owner'? How could anyone take away his racecourse?Kate Constable introduces this Text Classics edition of Patricia Wrightson's I Own the Racecourse!Patricia Wrightson was born in Lismore, NSW, in 1921. She was the author of twenty-seven children's novels including Nargun and the Stars, The Ice is Coming and The Crooked Snake. She has been awarded CBCA Book of the Year four...