Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Curse of Pietro Houdini

The Curse of Pietro Houdini

Miller, Derek B.

Paperback

Mystery & ThrillerHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $18.99

ISBN10: 1668020890
ISBN13: 9781668020890
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: Jan 28 2025
Pages: 400
Weight: 0.70
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
A vivid, thrilling, and moving World War II art-heist-adventure tale set in wartime Italy where enemies become heroes, allies become villains, and a child learns what it means to become an adult--that has the ring of truth and the echo of myth...[deserving of] all the lucky readers who discover it (The Wall Street Journal).

August, 1943. Fourteen-year-old Massimo is all alone. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving a bombing raid that killed his parents, Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbey's shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican, rescues Massimo and makes him an assistant in preserving the treasures that lay within the monastery walls.

But can Massimo believe what Pietro is saying, particularly when Massimo has secrets too? Who is this extraordinary man? When it becomes evident that Montecassino will soon become the front line in the war, Pietro Houdini and Massimo plan to smuggle three priceless Titian paintings to safety down the mountain. They are joined by a vivid cast of characters and together they will lie, cheat, steal, fight, kill, and sin their way through battlefields to survive, all while smuggling the Renaissance masterpieces and the bag full of ancient Greek gold they have rescued from the safe keeping of the Germans.

Heartfelt, powerfully engaging, and in the tradition of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, this is a work of storytelling bravado: a thrilling action-packed art heist, an imaginative chronicle of forgotten history, and a poignant coming-of-age epic where a child navigates one of the most morally complex fronts of World War II and lives to tell the tale.

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