Victor Canning: The Runaways (UK 2021)

From the Publisher:
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.

Victor Canning: The Runaways. The Smiler Trilogy 1. Farrago, ISBN: 9781788423489 (July, 2021), 240 p., £8.99, eBook £2.99.