On a night of wild storms, two lonely creatures escape from captivity. One of the creatures is a boy, Smiler, wrongly convicted of stealing, the other a cheetah, Yarra, leaving the Longleat Wild Life Park to have her cubs in privacy. Both are in danger from the outside world and each other, but somehow their lives become inextricably bound up as they fight for survival on the edge of Salisbury Plain. The Runaways is the first book in Victor Canning's classic children's trilogy, which continues in Flight of the Grey Goose. ‘Victor Canning is one of the world’s finest story-tellers’ Good Housekeeping

The second absorbing adventure in Victor Canning's Smiler trilogy. 'Smiler' is still on the run, aiming to evade the police until his father, a ship's cook, comes home to clear him of a crime he hasn't committed. Hitching a train to Scotland, he finds work as an animal caretaker within the grounds of a castle occupied by "the Laird", Sir Alec Elphinstone. When the Laird leaves on a trip to London, Smiler discovers that thieves are planning to invade his employer's castle.

The final book in Victor Canning's classic children's trilogy of life-affirming adventures. Freckled fugitive 'Smiler' finds his way to the farm of the "The Duchess" in North Devon, where he stays and tends to circus animals housed there for the winter. When a peregrine falcon, Fria, escapes, Smiler must search for ways of helping and recapturing the bird. In doing so, can he find solutions for the problem that has kept him in hiding from the police for so long?