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The Good Thief
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…
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Reviews
'A confident whirl of a read, with pathos and drama nicely juxtaposed'
'Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book'
'Reminds you why you fell in love with reading in the first place'
Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book - a beautifully composed work of literary magic. That masterpieces don't come along very often only makes it more wonderful to experience
A confident whirl of a read, with pathos and drama nicely juxtaposed
A sensitive tale, beautifully told
It may be too quaint to imagine there are still families reading aloud together at night (so many Web sites, so little time), but if you're out there, consider Hannah Tinti's charming first novel. Set in the dark woods of 19th-century New England, The Good Thief follows a bright, one-handed orphan through enough harrowing scrapes and turns to satisfy your inner Dickens
Tinti is lavish with her storytelling gifts, which are prodigious
[A] moody, twist and assured first novel.... Tinti secures her place as one of the sharpest, slyest young American novelists
Much-trumpeted debut novel featuring Ren, a one-handed orphan in 19th-Century New England. When rugged stranger Benjamin Nab takes charge of the lad, claiming to be his brother, Ren is soon left wondering just where the truth lies
A wonderful historical adventure strongly influenced by Poe, Dickens, and Patricia Highsmith. An excellent debut novel
A beautiful novel, a dazzling debut
'Tinti has written a lightening strike of a novel - beautiful and haunting and ever so bright. She is a twenty-first-century Robert Louis Stevenson'
'Tinti is lavish with her storytelling gifts, which are prodigious'