Little Thieves (Little Thieves #1)

Kids' Indie Next pick for November/December!
Amazon Best Book of October 2021!
A scrappy maid must outsmart both palace nobles and Low Gods in a new YA fantasy by Margaret Owen, author of the Merciful Crow series.

Once upon a time, there was a
horrible girl...

Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given,
not even a mother’s love—and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja,
the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful
servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers
demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future
back… by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.

The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while
Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a
lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility
while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away
from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end:
turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.

Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to
break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god,
Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail,
she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.

Margaret Owen, author of The Merciful Crow series,
crafts a delightfully irreverent retelling of “The Goose Girl” about stolen
lives, thorny truths, and the wicked girls at the heart of both.