Medici Heist
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
"Medici Heist is the most fun you'll ever have stealing from the Pope." —Britta Lundin, author of Ship It and Like Other Girls
From Caitlin Schneiderhan, writer on the hit show Stranger Things, comes a clever YA debut featuring a sharp-witted teenage thief who leads a team of skilled misfits on a dangerous and daring heist for fortune, freedom and revenge against a corrupt Pope in Renaissance Italy.
There’s nothing ‘impossible’ in this world. There are only things that very clever people have not done yet.
Welcome to Florence, 1517, a world of intrigue and opulence, murder and betrayal. Seventeen-year-old conwoman Rosa Cellini arrives in the city the same day that the Medici Pope, Leo X, returns to take up the reins of power. This is not a coincidence. The new Pope is extorting a mountain of indulgence money from the people of Florence to bolster his power and standing, and Rosa has a plan to take it back.
To pull off the Renaissance’s greatest robbery, she’ll recruit a team of specially-chosen, highly-skilled misfits: Sarra the tinkerer, Khalid the fighter, and Giacomo, the irrepressible master of disguise. To top it all off, and to smooth their entrance into the fortress-like Palazzo Medici, Rosa even enlists the reluctant help of the famed artist Michelangelo.
But as the authorities draw closer and the Medici’s noose pulls tighter around the land, old secrets resurface and tensions in the group start to flare. What began as a robbery could be the key to saving the city itself—if Rosa and company don’t destroy each other first.
"A stunning debut for Caitlin Schneiderhan. Weaving together a cast of loveable rogues, a richly detailed historical setting, and a cinematic thrill ride of a story, Medici Heist knocked us flat. Let’s hope this is the first of many epic adventures for Rosa and her crew—because we need more!" —the Duffer Brothers, creators of Netflix's Stranger Things
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young con artist enlists the help of Michelangelo to rob a corrupt pope in Schneiderhan's riveting debut heist tale. In 1517 Florence, where the Medicis reign with a golden fist, Rosa Cellini has been conning soldiers out of coins since she was a child. Now 17, Rosa concocts a plan to steal 10,000 gold florins from Pope Leo X and the Medicis, a seemingly impossible feat. She recruits the best thieves in Italy—tinkerer Sarra, sleight-of-hand prodigy and master of disguise Giacomo, prize fighter Khalid, and Agata, an alchemist and rumored witch—as well as famed painter Michelangelo and his magnetic assistant Dominic. But the Medici guard have eyes everywhere, and the band of misfits must put aside their fraught past to pull off the heist of the century. Inapposite metaphor and modern vocabulary spread across numerous alternating POVs occasionally fumble immersion into the 16th-century setting. Still, Schneiderhan utilizes clear-headed genre savvy and leisurely, dialogue-driven chapters teeming with sharp banter and elevating stakes to drive the found family toward their goal in this gleeful Renaissance caper. Characters cue as Italian. Ages 13–up.
