Lady Lightfingers

September 15, 2011
Although Celia Laws is only a teenager, she is a proficient pickpocket, supplementing her family's meager earnings in order to survive in the slums of mid-nineteenth-century London. Her mother is from a respectable family, but she was abandoned while pregnant by her husband and forced out of the family home by a conniving stepmother. Even in their reduced circumstances, however, she did teach her daughter how to read. One of Celia's more daring escapades involves Charles Curtis. He perceives the beauty hidden by rags and dirt and longs to know the identity of this light-fingered thief. He offers a large sum of money to a local madam to out Celia, but her search induces Celia to run away to relatives in Dorset. Her sweet aunt Harriet tries to make Celia into a proper young woman, but her past and the determined Charles Curtis, catch up to her. The ever-popular Woods offers her avid readers a lovely and thoughtful historical romance that delves into poverty and justice as well as the power of attraction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)