A man calling himself the Conte asks the "Thief Lord" to steal a wooden lion's wing for him.

At her house, Ida tells them the wing is from a magical merry-go-round, which has the ability to change a person's age.

While the others stay with Ida Spavento, Prosper and Scipio return to the Conte's island home to get the money they are owed.

On the island, the Conte's sister, Morosina, catches them climbing the wall and locks them inside the stables.

They reveal that they were the penniless servants of the nobles who lived there, and schemed to repair the merry-go-round to reclaim childhoods that had been lost to hard labor.

Esther catches Barbarossa stealing her jewelry and other possessions and sends him off to boarding school, where he becomes a menacing bully and takes over the title "Thief Lord".

Caterina Hornet Grimani: The only girl in the thief gang, she is described to be "slender, with a brown plait braided down to her hips".

Riccio Hedgehog : A runaway from an orphanage/children's home and former pickpocket of the group, he is described as "scrawny boy and at least a head shorter than Prosper, although he wasn't much younger than him".

Mosca: Abandoned by his family that no longer wanted him and group's mechanic, described as "skin was beautifully black, that it was always claimed he could hide like a shadow in the dark alleyways of the city".

He keeps a pair of tortoises as pets and has a number of disguises for his line of work, but slowly comes to realize that his new clients only want Bo back as a commodity than actually taking care of him and are not bothered if Prosper ends up in an orphanage.

Ida Spavento: A nice lady who looks after the kids for a while and, at the end of the book, takes in Prosper, Bo, and Hornet.

She regards Prosper as being too much like his mother and so couldn't care less on his outcome, whilst coming round to her husband's way of thinking in that they both should just cut their losses on both her nephews.

Kirkus noted Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes as an influence via the magical carousel.

[1][2] On May 25, 2006, Warner Bros. released a film adaptation of The Thief Lord starring Rollo Weeks in the title role.

The film was mildly successful but suffered from comparison to adaptations of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.