......The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon! It's one of my all-time favorite books and an incredible read that quite fulfills my desire for my first book to be an amazing one. I've planned the meeting for Saturday, October 2nd at 2:00 pm. I'll be announcing the book early next week. I'm so excited! It's an incredible book, everyone should read it! (On a random note, I've never seen the cover picture I have posted, but it's the coolest one I've seen for the book) So, what's this excellent, amazing, fantastic book about? See below! (I've edited it a bit in case of spoilers):
"At the first light of dawn in postwar Barcelona, a bookseller leads his motherless son to a mysterious crypt called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This labyrinthine sanctuary houses the books that have lost their owners, books that are no longer remembered by anyone. It is here that ten-year-old Daniel Sempere pulls a single book-The Shadow of the Wind-off of the dusty shelves to adopt as his own. With one fateful turn of a page, he begins an adventure that will unravel another man's tragedy and solve a mystery that has already taken many lives and will shape his entire future.
When Daniel speaks with Gustavo Barceló, a local booktrader, to find out more about his new treasure, word begins to spread that he has uncovered a long-sought rarity, perhaps the only copy of any of Julián Carax's works in existence. Soon after, a mysterious stranger whom Daniel recognizes as Laín Coubert, the leather-masked, cigarette-smoking devil from Carax's novel, propositions Daniel, offering to buy the book from him for an astronomical price. Daniel refuses, in spite of the man's thinly veiled threats. With the help of his bookselling friends, Daniel discovers that Laín Coubert has cut a swath of destruction through two countries, methodically searching for and destroying all of Carax's books while erasing every trace of Carax's life.
Daniel is swept up in unraveling the great mystery of the author's short but wretched life, an epic of two Barcelona families devastated by a secret no one could have guessed. Only when a woman is brutally murdered for trying to reveal the truth, and Fermín is framed for the crime, does Daniel begin to understand that the threat to his life is very real. And what begins as a young bibliophile's hobby turns into a diabolical murder mystery that, if Daniel is not careful, may write his own tragic ending."
--from http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/shadow_of_wind1.asp
