What to read after “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Eli Monpress is a wizard and a thief who would rather have a larger bounty than a heavier purse. To raise it he kidnaps a king, which brings the Spirit Court's envoy Miranda Lyonette after him. Eli's easy charm hides a plan that puts more than his own bounty at stake.
Morrigan Crow is blamed for every misfortune and is marked to die on her eleventh birthday. Instead she is spirited away to the secret city of Nevermoor to compete for a place in an exclusive society, against rivals and a curse that still hunts her.
Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is sent to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy, where proper young ladies learn dance, dress and etiquette, and also lock-picking, information gathering and the quieter arts of espionage. A stolen prototype and a plot against a schoolmate pull Sophronia and her new friends into danger.
In a city of canals and thieves, Locke Lamora leads a small band of con artists who rob the nobility. A hidden power turns the tables, and the crew find themselves caught in a scheme far larger than any of their own.
In an ancient China that never was, a plague falls on the children of a village. Number Ten Ox seeks the sage Master Li, a scholar with 'a slight flaw in his character', and the two set off through ghosts, gods and bandits to find the one cure that can save the children.
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
Wart is an orphan boy training to serve as a knight's squire in medieval England. When the wizard Merlyn arrives to tutor him, Wart is turned into animals, meets Robin Hood and learns about power and kingship. The sword in the stone waits for the one who can draw it.
Buttercup and farm boy Westley are parted when he sails away to make his fortune and is reported killed by pirates, and she is promised to a prince she does not love. A swordsman, a giant and a scheming noble chase the pair across a kingdom of pirates and wonders, in a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale of true love.
A boy lies awake on Christmas Eve when a steam train stops outside his house. The conductor invites him aboard, and the train carries a crowd of children through the night toward the North Pole, where a special gift awaits the one who still believes.
Mole leaves his underground home for the riverbank, where Rat, Badger and the reckless Mr. Toad become his friends. Their quiet days of boating and picnics are broken when Toad's craze for motorcars lands him in real trouble, and the four of them must set things right.
Scarlett has dreamed of Caraval, a magical game held once a year, as a way to escape her island home. When her sister is taken by the game's master, Scarlett must enter the show to find her, where nothing is real and the price of losing is high.
Fat Charlie Nancy learns that the father he barely knew was the spider god Anansi, and that he has a brother he never met. Spider is charming, magical and trouble, and he turns Charlie's careful life upside down while Charlie tries to bury a past that will not stay buried.
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert mean to adopt a boy to help on their farm, but the orphan who arrives is Anne Shirley, a talkative red-haired girl with a vivid imagination. Over years of scrapes and small triumphs she wins over the village of Avonlea and finds a place she can finally call home.
A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and leaves her forest to search for the others. With a bumbling magician and a sharp-tongued woman she travels to a king's castle, where love and loss wait at the end of the road.
Linus Baker, a lonely case worker, is sent to a remote island orphanage to check on six unusual children and their mysterious master, Arthur Parnassus. What begins as a routine inspection slowly becomes a choice between following the rules and protecting a family he comes to love.
Katarina Bishop has left her family's life of theft for a boarding school, but her father is accused of stealing five paintings from a dangerous collector. To save him, Kat assembles a crew of young thieves and plans a museum heist against a two-week deadline, with Interpol and a mobster close behind.
Each year the people of a village leave a baby in the forest for the witch they fear, and each year the witch Xan carries the child to a safe home. When she accidentally gives one baby moonlight instead of starlight, the girl gains dangerous magic, and Xan decides to raise her. Luna grows up among a swamp monster and a dragon, unaware of the mother who still mourns her.
Rincewind, a wizard who failed out of magic school, is saddled with guiding Twoflower, the Discworld's first tourist, on a chaotic tour. Their journey drags a naive optimist, a walking luggage chest and a very unwilling hero through one disaster after another.
A street criminal offers six dangerous outcasts a fortune to break into an impregnable fortress and rescue a captive inventor. The heist needs a plan no one has tried before, and none of the crew trusts the others.
Cursed by a witch into an old woman's body, Sophie takes shelter in the moving castle of the vain wizard Howl. Amid a fire demon, a scarecrow and Howl's tangled contracts, she finds a home and a way to break her own spell.
A young man promises to retrieve a fallen star for the girl he loves and crosses a wall into the land of Faerie. There he finds the star is a woman pursued by witches and princes, and his errand becomes a journey of its own.
Sancia Grado is a thief in Tevanne, a city where scribing commands objects to obey written orders. Hired to steal a key, she finds it holds power that could break the four merchant houses' grip on magic, and the houses will kill to keep that power buried.
A black-and-white circus arrives without warning and opens only at night. Behind its rivalry of illusions stand two young magicians, Celia and Marco, bound by a contest neither chose. As they fall in love, the circus and everyone in it becomes the stakes.
Alice follows a hurried white rabbit down a hole and lands in a world where cakes and drinks change her size and nothing follows ordinary rules. She meets the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and a short-tempered Queen.
Start with “The Spirit Thief”, “Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow”, “Etiquette & Espionage”: they are the closest to “The Thief Lord” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Thief Lord” these are Gentleman Thief, Found Family, Coming of Age), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Spirit Thief”, “Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow”, “Etiquette & Espionage”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
