The Good Thieves
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Go on an adventure with Katherine Rundell ...
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FOYLES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019
From the winner of the Costa Children's Book Award
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'An amazing adventure story, told with sparkling style and sleight of hand' - Jacqueline Wilson
'Read everything she writes' - Daily Mail
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Fresh off the boat from England, Vita Marlowe has a job to do. Her beloved grandfather Jack has been cheated out of his home and possessions by a notorious conman with Mafia connections. Seeing Jack's spirit is broken, Vita is desperate to make him happy again, so she devises a plan to outwit his enemies and recover his home.
She finds a young pickpocket, working the streets of the city. And, nearby, two boys with highly unusual skills and secrets of their own are about to be pulled into her lawless, death-defying plan.
Katherine Rundell's fifth novel is a heist as never seen before - the story of a group of children who will do anything to right a wrong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After a swindling Prohibition-era robber baron cheats Vita's grandfather out of his crumbling family castle on the Hudson River, she and her mother sail from England to assist him. Vita, who developed keen throwing skills during a bout of polio, greets New York City "as a boxer greets an opponent before a fight." Left to her own devices, she meets three talented children: Silk, a pickpocket, and two burgeoning circus performers who live in Carnegie Hall. Russian Arkady is deeply in tune with animals, and Samuel, a boy from Mashonaland, secretly trains as a trapeze artist. To help her grandfather, Vita persuades them to join her in a heist: break into the castle and find an emerald necklace ("large as a lion's eye") that belonged to her beloved late grandmother. Rundell hallmarks abound clever animals and children, themes of autonomy and cruelty (here frequently conveyed via the era's attitudes about ability and skin color). While the narrative build and heist occasionally succumb to unlikely moments, Rundell's (The Explorer) subtle telling and her protagonists' grit culminate in a dazzling tale of wild hope, lingering grief, admirable self-sufficiency, and intergenerational adoration. Ages 8 12.
