Book News
Harry Potter anniversary book
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first book in J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally best-selling series, will be rereleased in a special anniversary edition Sept. 23.
The book, published by Scholastic, will feature exclusive bonus material from Rowling, as well as new cover art and a four-color frontispiece.
The anniversary cover depicts 11- year-old Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised, which Harry comes across in his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and learns that the mirror shows you what you most desire.
Published in the United States in September 1998, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was praised by The New York Times: “as funny, moving and as impressive as the story behind the writing. (J.K. Rowling) had wizardry inside, and has soared beyond her modest muggle surroundings to achieve something quite special.”
There are 28 million copies of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in print in the United States, and 375 million copies of the seven books in the Harry Potter series have sold worldwide in 65 languages.
First Line
The Rosetta Key by William Dietrich
“Eyeing a thousand musket barrels aimed at one’s chest does tend to force consideration of whether the wrong path has been taken. So I did consider it, each muzzle bore looking as wide as the bite of a mongrel stray in a Cairo alley. But no, while I’m modest to a fault, I have my self-righteous side as well — and by my light it wasn’t me but the French army that had gone astray. Which I could have explained to my former friend, Napoleon Bonaparte, if he hadn’t been up on the dunes out of hailing distance, aloof and annoyingly distracted, his buttons and medals gleaming in the Mediterranean sun.
The first time I’d been on the beach with Bonaparte, when he landed his army in Egypt in 1798, he told me the drowned would be immortalized by history. Now, nine months later outside the Palestinian port of Jaffa, history was to be made of me. French grenadiers were getting ready to shoot me and the hapless Muslim captives I’d been thrown in with, and once more, I, Ethan Gage, was trying to figure out a way to sidestep destiny. It was a mass execution, you see, and I’d run afoul of the general I’d once attempted to befriend.”
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5. Vampire Knight, Volume 4, by Matsuri Hino
6. Full Metal Alchemist, Volume 16, by Hiromu Arakawa
7. Dark Wraith of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, Edwin David and Robert Napton
8. Death Note: How to Read 13, by Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata et al.
9. Bone: Ghost Circles, by Jeff Smith
10. Fair Tail, Volume 1, by Hiro Mashima
Publishers Weekly
