17 Best Heist Books

Teen thief Katarina Bishop tries to leave her family’s world of heists behind for boarding school, until her father is framed for stealing a mobster’s art. To save him, Kat pulls together a crew of teenage criminals for an impossible museum robbery.

Kaz Brekker is offered a fortune to pull off an impossible prison break, but he needs five dangerous specialists to do it. In Ketterdam, the plan becomes a test of skill, loyalty, and survival.

Victorian-era thief Edward Pierce plans an audacious raid on a gold shipment moving by rail. With disguises, inside help, and careful timing, the job looks possible—until one wrong assumption threatens to blow everything apart.

In the canal city of Camorr, orphan turned thief Locke Lamora leads the Gentleman Bastards, a tiny gang running intricate swindles against the nobility. When a mysterious rival starts killing crime bosses, his most ambitious con collides with a brutal struggle for control of the underworld.

A fake Back-to-Africa preacher vanishes with a fortune from a Harlem rally, only for the money to turn up hidden in a bale of cotton. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger chase grifters, gunmen, and dreamers through one of Himes's wildest cases.

Teenage heiress Margo Manning secretly leads a crew of drag queens in daring burglaries. A dark upheaval in her personal life and an especially dangerous job threaten their survival, forcing the thieves to turn their unusual skills toward protecting one another.

Ray Carney sells furniture on 125th Street and tries to keep his life respectable. When cousin Freddie pulls him into the Hotel Theresa robbery, Ray’s side business as a fence gets harder to hide.

Harvard senior Will Chen recruits four other Chinese American young people to steal back five sculptures looted from Beijing. The heist is slick and tense, but the deeper stakes are family pressure, history, and the ache of not fully belonging anywhere.

Fresh from prison, thief John Dortmunder is recruited by Andy Kelp to steal a valuable emerald. The job promises a return to professional crime, but recovering the same stone repeatedly turns one planned robbery into a succession of increasingly troublesome heists.

Dismissed from a wealthy London household, Mrs. King recruits an unlikely group of women to empty its rooms during a grand costume ball. Beneath the audacious theft lies her determination to expose the truth behind the family's power.

In an audacious scheme, Parker agrees to clean out an entire North Dakota mining town in a single night, from both banks to the company payroll. With a crew this large, one bad decision can bring the whole town crashing back on them.

Betrayed by his partner and the woman he trusted, professional thief Parker survives an attempt on his life. He heads to New York to recover his stolen money and pursue revenge, setting the stage for the first Parker crime novel.

Traumatized into silence as a child, Michael has not spoken in years, but he can open almost any lock or safe he touches. Drawn into increasingly dangerous jobs by people who covet his talent, he risks everything to protect the girl he loves and confront the secret that stole his voice.

Four students at a Philadelphia prep school notice a security flaw during a class visit to the U.S. Mint. Facing a crisis, the unlikely allies plan a robbery, with each teenager's perspective revealing different motives and doubts about the scheme.

Seventy two year old novelist Penelope Fitzpatrick refuses to sit quietly after thieves steal her last heirloom necklace during a slick museum robbery. She recruits four friends to form the Heist Ladies, chasing an international con man to steal back what is hers.

Kai Pohala arrives in occupied Agdel Lex to chase a business lead and reconnect with her sister, only to get pulled into a crime, a heist, and a city's buried ghosts.

Marisol Rivera funds a women’s health clinic through an exclusive escort business that also provides cover for robbing corrupt executives. An ambitious heist promises financial security, but threatens the women and essential services she is determined to protect.