The thief Lord

Cornelia Funke is a German authoress who has given us great books like "inkheart", among others. But the book that lead me to discover Miss Funke is called "The thief Lord". This book, as well as inkheart, has been made into a film, and, well, let's just say they turned out better than Percy Jackson, and the fourth Harry Potter film. here is a summary of the book:
"When Prosper and Boniface are orphaned, their evil aunt Esther takes both boys in but decides she wants to adopt only Bo, who's five. She plans to send the older Prosper off to boarding school. Unable to stand the thought of being separated, Prosper and Bo run away to their late mother's favorite city, Venice, where they become part of a small group of street children who live in an abandoned movie theater and help out the boy whose name is Scipio but prefers to be called The Thief Lord. Every few nights, the Thief Lord will suddenly and mysteriously appear with stolen goods which he says he's stolen from Venice's richest house. His underlings, who include a girl nicknamed Hornet and ragamuffins Riccio and Mosca, sell the goods to a crooked, greedy, selfish shopkeeper named Barbarossa.

Realizing that the boys were raised on their mother's stories of the magical Venice, Esther Hartlieb suspects they're hiding out there. In Venice, she hires a private detective named Victor to search for the boys. At the same time, Barbarossa approaches the gang with a proposition - a mysterious Count desires the Thief Lord to steal something for him. Barbarossa assumes the Count is after a precious jewel or some such, but when the children and the Count meet, he reveals to them that what he's actually after is a piece that long ago broke off from a magical merry-go-round, which has the power to make its riders either younger or older, depending on which way they ride. He points them to the house where the wooden wing is kept.

The Thief Lord has begun to plot how to break into this house, when the detective, by a stroke of great fortune, finds out where Prosper and Bo are hiding. He will also find out the Thief Lord's true identity."


Sounds interesting, doesn't it? I know I liked it!