The Shadow of the Wind

Barcelona 1945--Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, and a boy named DAniel awakes one day to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, and antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's quild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a book that will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called the Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the 1st of Carax's books in existence. Before Daniel knows it, his innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love.