Are you obsessed with fairytale retellings? You won’t want to miss Little Thieves by Margaret Owen. This delightfully irreverent retelling of “The Goose Girl” is an absolute must-read, especially if you love a truly wicked fantasy. But if you need some extra incentive to add this one to your TBR, be sure to check out this interview with the author! What makes Vanja fierce? Well, Vanja's a horrible little gremlin child, so ferocity comes with the territory! It's hard to be a successful scammer without at least a crumb of chutzpah. If you could give Vanja one piece of advice, what would it be? I’d say it’s a three-way tie between ‘go to therapy,’ ‘stop calling people names,’ and ‘learn a marketable skill, cheating at cards does not count.’ What's the strangest thing you learned while researching Little Thieves? Frank Abagnale Jr. once scammed people by putting a sign on a money deposit box that read ‘Out of Order, please leave deposits with security guard’ and standing next to it, wearing a security guard uniform. People just handed him money! No one asked themselves, How could a BOX be out of order? If you'd met Vanja as a teen, would you have been friends with her? Almost certainly not. She would have scammed me out of my Pokemon cards in a heartbeat. What's one fun fact most people don't know about you? My parents couldn’t agree whether to name me Margaret or Molly. Their compromise was to legally name me Margaret and to nickname me Molly, which is a leap in logic the TSA isn’t too fond of. What's your favorite part of being an author? Apart from the sheer amount of entertainment that qualifies as a tax deduction? Probably my work uniform being pajamas. And, you know, bringing worlds to life and shaping the hearts and minds of generations to come… but it’s pretty hard to beat pajamas. What's the most challenging part of being an author? Here’s a hint: I’m writing this at 10 pm! If I’m not careful, I don’t give myself time off, or I wait until I’m close to burnout and then creatively hibernate, like a bear, except bears don’t have to pay rent. In retrospect, maybe I should try being a bear. What 3 words would you use to describe Little Thieves? Magic, mayhem, and gremlins! Little Thieves by Margaret Owen 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.