Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished
R. M. Ballantyne, the Scottish master of adventure who brought readers The Coral Island, turns his gaze toward the mean streets of Victorian London in this spirited tale of city Arab life. When a runaway carriage thunders through crowded streets, it collides with the unlikely destinies of a spirited young girl and a wiry street urchin named Bob, launching them into a world of pickpockets, street vendors, and narrow escapes. Ballantyne knew these streets intimately, having documented them for years, and he renders the urchin underworld with the same vivid authority other writers reserved for desert islands. The novel follows Bob and his friends as they navigate the desperate economics of poverty, outwit the authorities, and discover what it means to be loyal when society has labeled them worthless. Yet this is no grim social tract: it crackles with humor, narrow scrapes, and the irrepressible resilience of children who treat survival as the ultimate adventure. For readers who wonder what Oliver Twist might have felt like had Dickens allowed him to fight back.
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Joseph DeNoia, Lynne T, Kathleen Moore, Mike Pelton +8 more
