Arnold Bennett is famous for his stories about the Five Towns and the people who live there. They look and sound just like other people, and, like all of us, sometimes they do some very strange things. There's Sir Jee, who is a rich businessman. So why is he making a plan with a burglar? Then there is Toby Hall. Why does he decide to visit Number 11 Child Row, and who does he find there? And then there are the Hessian brothers and Annie Emery — and the little problem of twelve thousand pounds.

When men find gold in the frozen north of Canada, they need dogs — big, strong dogs to pull the sledges on the long journeys to and from the gold mines. Buck is stolen from his home in the south and sold as a sledge-dog. He has to learn a new way of life — how to work in harness, how to stay alive in the ice and the snow... and how to fight. Because when a dog falls down in a fight, he never gets up again.