A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York PDF Author: Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039334133X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
"A true story more incredible than fiction." —Kevin Baker, author of Striver's Row In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as an exemplar of the "good fellow," a criminal who relied on wile, who followed a code of loyalty even in his world of deception. Here is the underworld of the New York that gave us Edith Wharton, Boss Tweed, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York PDF Author: Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039334133X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
"A true story more incredible than fiction." —Kevin Baker, author of Striver's Row In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as an exemplar of the "good fellow," a criminal who relied on wile, who followed a code of loyalty even in his world of deception. Here is the underworld of the New York that gave us Edith Wharton, Boss Tweed, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

A Bandit's Tale: The Muddled Misadventures of a Pickpocket

A Bandit's Tale: The Muddled Misadventures of a Pickpocket PDF Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0385755015
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
From an award-winning author of historical fiction comes a story of survival, crime, adventure, and horses in the streets of 19th century New York City. Eleven-year-old Rocco is an Italian immigrant who finds himself alone in New York City after he's sold to a padrone by his poverty-stricken parents. While working as a street musician, he meets the boys of the infamous Bandits' Roost, who teach him the art of pickpocketing. Rocco embraces his new life of crime—he's good at it, and it's more lucrative than banging a triangle on the street corner. But when he meets Meddlin' Mary, a strong-hearted Irish girl who's determined to help the horses of New York City, things begin to change. Rocco begins to reexamine his life—and take his future into his own hands.

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid PDF Author: Colin Meloy
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062342479
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
From the creators of the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles comes an original, humorous, and fast-paced middle grade novel about a band of child pickpockets—imagine The Invention of Hugo Cabret meets Oliver Twist. It is an ordinary Tuesday morning in April when bored, lonely Charlie Fisher witnesses something incredible. Right before his eyes, in a busy square in Marseille, a group of pickpockets pulls off an amazing robbery. As the young bandits appear to melt into the crowd, Charlie realizes with a start that he himself was one of their marks. Yet Charlie is less alarmed than intrigued. This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to him since he came to France with his father, an American diplomat. So instead of reporting the thieves, Charlie defends one of their cannons, Amir, to the police, under one condition: he teach Charlie the tricks of the trade. What starts off as a lesson on pinches, kicks, and chumps soon turns into an invitation for Charlie to join the secret world of the whiz mob, an international band of child thieves who trained at the mysterious School of Seven Bells. The whiz mob are independent and incredibly skilled and make their own way in the world—they are everything Charlie yearns to be. But what at first seemed like a (relatively) harmless new pastime draws him into a dangerous adventure with global stakes greater than he could have ever imagined.

A Pickpocket's Tale

A Pickpocket's Tale PDF Author: Karen Schwabach
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375849211
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A perfect Common Core tie-in, A Pickpocket's Tale includes nonfiction backmatter with a historical map of New York City in 1730, a glossary of period vocabulary words, and an explanatory note titled "How Much of This Story Is True?" Molly Abraham is a kinchin mort: a ten-year-old thief trying not to starve on the London streets. But everything changes for Molly when she is sentenced to be transported to the American colonies. She becomes an indentured servant to a kind Jewish family in New York City, and Molly has it good. So why is it that all she wants to do is go back to London? Karen Schwabach uses richly detailed descriptions and authentic period language to bring history to life. She skillfully explores the subjects of Jewish culture in Colonial America and London street culture in this gritty yet heartwarming debut novel.

Sleights of Mind

Sleights of Mind PDF Author: Susana Martinez-Conde
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847652956
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
What can magic tell us about ourselves and our daily lives? If you subtly change the subject during an uncomfortable conversation, did you know you're using attentional 'misdirection', a core technique of magic? And if you've ever bought an expensive item you'd sworn never to buy, you were probably unaware that the salesperson was, like an accomplished magician, a master at creating the 'illusion of choice'. Leading neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde meet with magicians from all over the world to explain how the magician's art sheds light on consciousness, memory, attention, and belief. As the founders of the new discipline of NeuroMagic, they combine cutting-edge scientific research with startling insights into the tricks of the magic trade. By understanding how magic manipulates the processes in our brains, we can better understand how we work - in fields from law and education to marketing, health and psychology - for good and for ill.

Another Twist in the Tale

Another Twist in the Tale PDF Author: Catherine Bruton
Publisher: Nosy Crow
ISBN: 1788006313
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
You have heard, no doubt, the tale of Master Oliver Twist - that rags-to-riches boy; the parish orphan who became heir to the Brownlow fortune. But what few know is that was a second Twist - a girl, brought into this world moments ahead of her brother. This is the story of Twill Twist - and her journey through the gambling dens and workhouses of London, as she attempts to make a life for herself, rescue her friends, and uncover the mystery of her past - while meeting some familiar faces along the way... Re-discover the Artful Dodger, Fagin, and Oliver Twist himself, along with a host of fantastic new heroes and villains, in this brilliantly-imagined, rip-roaring sequel to Dickens' much-loved classic.

Smith

Smith PDF Author: Leon Garfield
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141930128
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Young Smith was a pickpocket - a very accomplished one. But one day his pick-pocketing was to lead him into a sinister and dangerous web of murder, intrigue and betrayal.

The Lies of Locke Lamora

The Lies of Locke Lamora PDF Author: Scott Lynch
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0593725425
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
Fantasy meets crime caper in the first book of a landmark, enduringly popular epic series about a roguish group of conmen, which George R. R. Martin has called “fresh, original, and engrossing . . . gorgeously realized.” An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges relentless danger, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentlemen Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying.

The Alteration

The Alteration PDF Author: Kingsley Amis
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590176170
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
BOOKER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR Set in a world in which the Reformation failed, this award-winning science fiction tale is “one of the best . . . alternate-worlds novels in existence” (Philip K. Dick) In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice. How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret PDF Author: Brian Selznick
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 1407166573
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
An orphan and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy train station. He desperately believes a broken automaton will make his dreams come true. But when his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo's undercover life are put in jeopardy. Turn the pages, follow the illustrations and enter an unforgettable new world!