Toss in Olivia’s impending engagement to a friend for whom she feels only platonic love, and a powder keg of a romantic triangle develops. Though it’s love at first sight, the two wrestle with their unsuitable affection and unsavory pasts. Olivia recognizes Jack as the Artful Dodger but keeps her identity from him. Olivia can’t forget her origins, and while snooping around during a formal dinner, she comes upon another sneak-the eye-catching gentleman named Jack MacCarron, who was also about to lift jewels from their owners. Before her long-lost uncle took her in, she grew up disguised as a boy named Oliver, who became a street rat in a gang run by the Artful Dodger.

Vivacious and lovely, 18-year-old Olivia Brownlow is a highly eligible young woman in London’s 1859 society. Olivia Twist is a jacketed hardcover with decorative embossing. Why is a society girl helping a bunch of homeless orphan thieves? Even more intriguing, why does she remind him so much of someone he once knew? Jack finds himself wondering if going legit and risking it all might be worth it for love.

When Jack encounters Olivia Brownlow in places he least expects, his curiosity is piqued. Little does society know that MacCarron is a false name for a boy once known among London gangs as the Artful Dodger, and that he and his “aunt” are robbing them blind every chance they get. Jack MacCarron rose from his place in London’s East End to become the adopted “nephew” of a society matron. But she can’t seem to escape her past … or forget the teeming slums where children just like her still scrabble to survive. When she is taken in by her uncle after a caper gone wrong, her life goes from fighting and stealing on the streets to lavish dinners and soirees as a debutante in high society. Born in a workhouse and raised as a boy among thieving London street gangs, she is as tough and cunning as they come. Olivia Brownlow is no damsel in distress. Now eighteen, Olivia finds herself at a crossroads: revealed secrets threaten to destroy the “proper” life she has built for herself, while newfound feelings for an arrogant young man she shouldn’t like could derail her carefully laid plans for the future. Olivia Twist is an innovative reimagining of Charles Dickens’ classic tale Oliver Twist, in which Olivia was forced to live as a boy for her own safety until she was rescued from the streets.

Olivia Twist by Lorie Langdon