On a night of wild storms, two troubled figures escape from captivity. One is a 15-year-old boy, Samuel Miles, a.k.a. Smiler, wrongly convicted of theft and sent to a young offenders institution. The other is a cheetah, Yarra, a restless resident of Longleat Wildlife Park. 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. A fast-moving and compassionate adventure story, The Runaways is the first book in Victor Canning's classic children's trilogy.

 

 

This book features in the following series: New Windmills Series, Puffin, Smiler Trilogy, The Smiler Trilogy .

This book has been graded for interest at 13-18 years.

There are 240 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2021 by Duckworth Books .

Victor Canning was primarily a writer of thrillers, and wrote his many books under the pseudonyms Julian Forest and Alan Gould. Among his immediate contemporaries were Eric Ambler, Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes. Canning was a prolific writer throughout his career, which began young: he had sold several short stories by the age of nineteen and his first novel, Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934) was published when he was twenty-three. Canning also wrote for children: his Smiler trilogy was adapted for US children's television. Canning's later thrillers were darker and more complex than his earlier work and received great critical acclaim. The Rainbird Pattern was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger in 1973 and nominated for an Edgar award in 1974. In 1976 The Rainbird Pattern was transformed by Alfred Hitchcock into the comic film The Family Plot, which was to be Hitchcock's last film. Several of Canning's other novels including Golden Salamander (1949) were also made into films during Canning's lifetime.