In a city that runs on a dwindling supply of magic, a young boy is drawn into a life of wizardry and adventure. Conn should have dropped dead the day he picked Nevery’s pocket and touched the wizard’s locus magicalicus, a stone used to focus magic and work spells. But for some reason he did not. Nevery decides to take Conn as his apprentice on the provision that the boy find a locus stone of his own.

This last book in The Magic Thief Trilogy also includes a pattern for a Lockpick Scarf.

The scarf features in the text of the book as a handknitted present for Conn from Benet, the knitting, baking bodyguard.

Benet handed me a scarf, one he’d knitted. It was long and nettle-green and had a keyhole shape knitted into the end and a long fringe, and he’d stitched my name on it in runes. The edges were thick enough to hide lockpick wires in, I reckoned.

“It’s perfect,” I said, stroking the soft wool.

Hardcover published in September 2008 by Quercus

harpercollinschildrens.com