Little Thieves

For the last year, the wicked maid Vanja Schmidt has lived a lie. Once the loyal servant of Princess Gisele, she stole a string of enchanted pearls that transformed her into the glamorous princess, leaving the true Gisele a penniless nobody.

Vanja's godmothers are Death and Fortune, and their care came with a price: when she comes of age, she owes them a life of servitude. So she robs the nobility of Minkja blind, working her way toward the money that will buy her freedom from both of them — one identity by day, one alias by night. Then, a single heist from getting out, she offends the wrong god and is cursed: she will turn to jewels, stone by stone, for her greed. She has two weeks to undo it.

Making that harder are a feral shapeshifting half-god named Ragne, sent to guard her; Gisele's fiancé Adalbrecht, a margrave with his own designs on the marriage; and Emeric Conrad, an overeager junior prefect determined to catch the jewel thief he does not yet know he is standing next to.

Margaret Owen's retelling of the Brothers Grimm's "The Goose Girl" hands the story to the maid — the villain of the original — and lets her explain herself. It is a heist novel with a slow-burning romance folded into it, funny and profane on the surface, and considerably darker underneath: much of what Vanja is running from is what was done to her as a child. First in the Little Thieves trilogy, followed by Painted Devils and Holy Terrors.