A great big, lush, historical adventure that grabs you from page one and hurtles you through the extraordinary life of an orphan lad desperate to belong somewhere. He gets whisked out of the orphanage by a con-man, a petty criminal, a man who needs a small guy to help ply his trade. But as with all good novels, pure hearts have a habit of infiltrating bad ones and sometimes life can turn on its head. I loved this book, the dirty, the desperate, the hungry all play a big part in a small life which ends up a very big life indeed. Just read it.
Set in the wild, seamy and extremely strange America of the nineteenth century: a historical novel so richly involving and so touching that you never want it to end. Young Ren is missing his parents and a hand and doesn't know what happened to any of them. So he is beginning to fear that he will never be claimed from his cold New England orphanage: that his dream of a family -- of a life -- will come to nothing.
But one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the orphanage. To Ren's astonishment, the charming Benjamin Nab says he is his brother, come to bring him home. And even when his stories grow more and more extraordinary, when he puts Ren's life in danger again and again and sets him first to theft and then to grave-robbing, Ren cannot quite abandon hope.
That one day all the hunger and danger and unwanted excitement will be worth it, that he will find a family. But whether Benjamin is to be trusted is another story!
'A confident whirl of a read, with pathos and drama nicely juxtaposed' - Guardian
'Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvellous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book' - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
Author
About Hannah Tinti
Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in publications including Story, Epoch, Alaska Quaterly Review and Best American Mystery Stories 2003. She earned her M.A. from New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program and has been awarded residency fellowships from, among others, the New York State Writers Institute. She is currently the editor of One Story magazine.
