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.