It’s been a while since I fell under the spell of a new historical author. There’s likely a good reason for that: there just don’t seem to be as many of them out there! Everywhere I turn people are deserting their quills for stories about word-processing heroines who work in the NYPD and pack heat — not reticules.

It’s not hard to rave out this book. I happened across it and ran to Amazon to order the author’s entire backlist: one book. Bummer.

Here’s what I’m desperate for when reading historical romances: originality. Characters who are just odd enough to keep me reading. Situations that don’t seem to have been stamped out by rote. Now I admit that the plot is not the most original part of To Love a Thief. Frankly, after Judith Ivory transformed a rat-catcher into a hero in The Proposition, I figured I had read the last Pygmalion story I wanted to read. In case you’re blanking on the myth: Pygmalion wouldn’t have anything to do with the women of his day, so he fashioned himself an ivory statue and then prayed to Venus to make her alive, which Venus promptly did. Exit, stage left, Pygmalion and one formerly ivory lady named Galatea. Of course, at closer quarters, Pygmalion transformed into My Fair Lady, a film made from George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion. Now we have ladies not of ivory but of low birth. The film’s worth watching once, if only for “I Could Have Danced All Night”. . . but really, do we need to read more versions of the same?

Well, we do if the results are as impetuous and original as Julie Anne Long’s version. Her Eliza Doolittle is Lily Masters, a heroine with a talent for picking pockets. Since her mother died, she’s been keeping herself and her little sister Alice afloat by dashing about London stealing purses. Of course she doesn’t manage to steal Gideon Cole’s. She’s about to be throw into prison for snatching a plump man’s watch, so Gideon flings his last thirty pounds at the gentleman and buys her services. So to speak.

What turns a tired plot into something new? Well, for one thing, it takes a really original voice. And a set of characters who only look like the same old, same old, but turn out to be quite different. Gideon, for example, is no Pygmalion, for all he pays Lily to turn herself into a gentlewoman and act as a rival to his beloved Constance. (OK, the reasoning is weak here: it was never clear to me that rivalry would make Constance fall into his arms versus his rival’s.)

Naturally, Lily does it. The delicately barbed discussions between Constance and herself, once Lily explodes onto the London scene, are a delight. Even better, the way in which Lily and Gideon come to love each other’s faults is delicious. The way they come to know each other’s bodies even more delicious . . .

So: Let’s discuss To Love a Thief in the next book club, in a couple of weeks (June 15). Try to get hold of it, and if you can’t, just chime about which Pygmalion stories you’ve read. Are there more romances along the same lines than the ones I have mentioned so far? One of my absolute favorite romances in the world is Teresa Medeiros’s Once An Angel.