The Queen of Attolia

Readers will be spellbound, not only by the plot's ingenious twists and turns, but by the powerful webs of humor and sorrow, differences and commonalities, love and loyalty that bind this memorable cast together. Kirkus Reviews

It features a power struggle of potentially catastrophic proportions as war erupts when Attolia's Queen chops off the hand of the Queen of Eddis's Thief for spying. This complex plot, with its fiendish political twists, is set in a country similar to Ancient Greece, with its own set of interfering gods and goddesses. The Thief, Eugenides, returns a broken man to Eddis, but is roused from his despair by a messenger from the gods telling him to stop whining and start saving the situation. Young teenagers will be fascinated by its ingenious plot and wry humour, and by the fascinating cast of characters that people this ancient landscape. Financial Times

Megan Whalen Turner is married to a professor and often relocates when he needs to do research. When they travelled to Greece one summer, she decided to use its landscape as the background of a book, but didn't write The Thief until she was spending a year in California, where the olive trees reminded her of the Greek mainland.