The ​Enchantress of Florence

Salman Rushdie - Shame
In ​this brilliant novel, Salman Rushdie masterfully combines history, art, language, politics, and religion. Set in a country "not quite Pakistan," the story centers around the families of two men-one a celebrated warrior, the other, a debauched playboy-engaged in a protracted duel that is played out in the political landscape of their country. Shame is a tour de force and a fitting predecessor to the author's legendary novel, The Satanic Verses.

Neil Gaiman - American ​Gods
Shadow ​is a man with a past and wants nothing more now than to live a quiet life with his wife. When his wife is killed in a terrible accident, Shadow flies home for the funeral. As a raging storm rocks the plane, the strange man in the seat next to Shadow introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday. He knows more about Shadow than is possible--and he warns Shadow an even bigger storm is coming.

Salman Rushdie - Imaginary ​Homelands
This ​collection of 75 of Salman Rushdie's candid personal essays--an informative companion to his fiction--provide a record of his thoughts on various aspects of our world: politics, religion, the lives and work of fellow writers (including an elegy for Raymond Carver), movies (one of Rushdie's passions), the experiences of immigration and exile, and his own books.

J. K. Rowling - Harry ​Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The ​Dursleys were so mean and hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he is packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike. And strike it does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including and outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockheart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls' bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley's younger sister, Ginny. But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone - or something - starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects... Harry Potter himself?

J. K. Rowling - Harry ​Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Read ​by Jim Dale Running time: 20 hrs., 30 mins. 17 CDs. Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year of magical adventures in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This year Harry turns 14 and becomes interested in girls -- one in particular. And with Dark Magic comes danger, as someone close to Harry dies. You'll have to listen to learn more! The audio is available on July 8th.

Salman Rushdie - Midnight's ​Children
Saleem ​Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

J. K. Rowling - Harry ​Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It ​is the middle of the summer, but there is an unseasonal mist pressing against the windowpanes. Harry Potter is waiting nervously in his bedroom at the Dursleys' house in Privet Drive for a visit from Professor Dumbledore himself. One of the last times he saw the Headmaster was in a fierce on-to-one duel with Lord Voldemort, and Harry can't quite believe that Professor Dumbledore will actually appear at the Dursleys' of all places. Why is the Professor coming to visit him now? What is it that cannot wait until Harry returns to Hogwarts in a few weeks' time? Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts has already got off to an unusual start, as the worlds of Muggle and magic start to intertwine...

Salman Rushdie - Step ​Across this Line
From ​one of the great novelists of our day, a vital, brilliant new book of essays, speeches and articles essential for our times. Step Across This Line showcases the other side of one of fiction’s most astonishing conjurors. On display is Salman Rushdie’s incisive, thoughtful and generous mind, in prose that is as entertaining as it is topical. The world is here, captured in pieces on a dazzling array of subjects: from New York’s Amadou Diallo case to the Wizard of Oz, from U2 to fifty years of Indian writing, from a tribute to Angela Carter to the struggle to film Midnight’s Children. The title essay was originally delivered at Yale as the 2002 Tanner lecture on human values, and examines the changing meaning of frontiers in the modern world -- moral and metaphorical frontiers as well as physical ones. The collection chronicles Rushdie’s intellectual journeys, but it is also an intimate invitation into his life: he explores his relationship to India through a moving diary of his first visit there in over a decade, “A Dream of Glorious Return.” Step Across This Line also includes “Messages From the Plague Years,” a historic set of letters, articles and reflections on life under the fatwa. Gathered together for the first time, this is Rushdie’s humane, intelligent and angry response to a grotesque threat, aimed not just at him but at free expression itself. Step Across This Line, Salman Rushdie’s first collection of non-fiction in a decade, has the same energy, imagination and erudition as his astounding novels -- along with some very strongopinions.

Salman Rushdie - The ​Jaguar Smile
In ​this timeless, haunting portrait of the people and the politics of Nicaragua, Rushdie brings to life the palpable human facts of a country in the midst of a revolution. Rushdie went to Nicaragua in 1986, harboring no preconceptions of what he might find. What he discovered was overwhelming: a culture of heroes who had turned into inanimate objects and of politicians and warriors who were poets; a land of difficult, often beautiful contradictions. His perceptions always heightened by his special sensitivity to "the views from underneath," Rushdie reveals a land resounding with the clashes between history and morality, government and individuals.

J. K. Rowling - Harry ​Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry ​Potter is an ordinary boy who lives in a cupboard under the stairs at his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon’s house, which he thinks is normal for someone like him who’s parents have been killed in a ‘car crash’. He is bullied by them and his fat, spoilt cousin Dudley, and lives a very unremarkable life with only the odd hiccup (like his hair growing back overnight!) to cause him much to think about. That is until an owl turns up with a letter addressed to Harry and all hell breaks loose! He is literally rescued by a world where nothing is as it seems and magic lessons are the order of the day. Read and find out how Harry discovers his true heritage at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, the reason behind his parents mysterious death, who is out to kill him, and how he uncovers the most amazing secret of all time, the fabled Philosopher’s Stone! All this and muggles too. Now, what are they?? The Author: This is Jo’s first book and she has already written seven outlines for Harry’s further adventures at Hogwarts. She lives in Edinburgh.

Salman Rushdie - Joseph ​Anton (angol)
On ​February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist who told the author that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. Compelling, provocative, and moving, Joseph Anton is a book of exceptional frankness, honesty, and vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

Salman Rushdie - Luka ​and the Fire of Life
A ​dazzling story told for the love of story by the greatest of storytellers gives us a novel of wisdom and pleasure for all ages, in which a young boy must battle his way through a dangerous world in order to save his father. On a beautiful starry night in the city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay, a terrible thing happened: twelve-year-old Luka's storyteller father, Rashid, fell suddenly and inexplicably into a sleep so deep that nothing and no one could rouse him. To save him from slipping away entirely, Luka must embark on a journey through The Magic World, encountering a slew of phantasmagorical obstacles along the way, to steal the Fire of Life, a seemingly impossible and exceedingly dangerous task. Rushdie proved that he is one of the best contemporary writers with Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990). While Haroun was written as a gift for his first son, Luka and the Fire of Life, the story of Haroun's younger brother, is a gift for Salman's second son on the occasion of his twelfth birthday. Lyrically crafted and filled with frolicking wordplay, this is Salman Rushdie at his best.

J. K. Rowling - Harry ​Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Read ​by Jim Dale Running time: 11 hrs., 48 mins. 10 CDs. For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts." Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

Salman Rushdie - The ​Satanic Verses
Just ​before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. The Satanic Verses is a wonderfully erudite study of the evil and good entwined within the hearts of women and men, an epic journey of tears and laughter, served up by a writer at the height of his powers.

Salman Rushdie - Fury
Fury ​is the story of a dollmaker whose dolls run wild, of living women turned into dolls and then broken, and of a revolt on the planet's far side led by an army of living dolls. Fury is a novel of an old, deep love gone wrong, of a second, twisted passion rooted in wrongness, and of a third, passionate love that just might turn out right. Fury is a novel of furious energy, a study of the workings of fury at the heart of human lives: the personal fury that poisons human relations, the psychotic fury that fuels murderers, the social fury born of our raised and disappointed hopes, the creative fury that sets free our greatest gifts, the political fury that starts revolutions and burns whole cities down. Fury is a novel of today, an utterly contemporary portrait of life at the beginning of the third millennium, life in New York during an apparently endless time of prosperity that is paradoxically also a time of barrenness in many people's lives, and also in the world-empire that America rules, although it barely knows where it is.

Gabriel García Márquez - One ​Hundred Years of Solitude
One ​Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

Herman Melville - Moby ​Dick (angol)
Moby-Dick, ​written in 1851, recounts the adventures of the narrator Ishmael as he sails on the whaling ship Pequod under the command of Captain Ahab. Ishmael believes he has signed onto a routine commission aboard a normal whaling vessel, but he soon learns that Captain Ahab is not guiding the Pequod in the simple pursuit of commerce but is seeking one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a great while whale infamous for his giant proportions and his ability to destroy the whalers that seek him. Captain Ahab's wooden leg is the result of his first encounter with the whale, when he lost both leg and ship. But Captain Ahab is bent on revenge and he intends to get Moby-Dick. Ahab demonstrates erratic behavior from the very beginning and his eccentricities magnify as the voyage progresses. As the novel draws to a conclusion, the Pequod encounters the whaling ship Rachel. The Rachel's captain asks Ahab to help him in a search and rescue effort for his whaling-crew that went missing the day before - and the captain's son is among the missing. But when Ahab learns that the crew disappeared while tangling with Moby-Dick he refuses the call to aid in the rescue so that he may hunt Moby-Dick instead. The encounter with Moby-Dick brings a tragic end to the affair. Ishmael alone survives, using his friend Queequeg's coffin as a flotation device until he is ironically rescued by the Rachel, which has continued to search for its missing crew. The novel is not only a great American classic, but is also heralded as one of greatest novels in the English language.

Agatha Christie - And ​Then There Were None
‘Agatha ​Christie’s masterpiece.’ Spectator The World’s Best-selling Mystery! Ten strangers are lured to an island mansion by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner a record begins to play. An unknown voice accuses each guest of harbouring a guilty secret. That evening Tony Marston is murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide. The survivors soon realise that the killer is amongst them and preparing to strike, again and again, until there were none… ‘One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.’ Observer ‘The most astonishingly impudent, ingenious and altogether successful mystery story since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.’ Daily Herald

Jodi Picoult - Plain ​Truth
The ​discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide and, for the first time in her high profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own. Delving deep into the world of those who live 'plain', Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. As she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past comes back into her life.

Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely ​Loud and Incredibly Close
In ​Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer tells the story of a precocious 9-year old boy, Oskar Schell. Oskar is very intelligent and independent, writes letters to Stephen Hawking, designs jewelry, and wanders about New York City wearing only white while playing the tambourine. On 9/11, he discovers the family's answering machine contains 5 messages from his father trapped in the north tower before he dies, and he hides the messages from his mother. Oskar struggles to deal with this inconsolable loss, distancing himself from his mom who eventually finds another man, and dreaming of fanciful inventions that can protect people from harm. When he finds a key in his father's closet with the word "Black" on the envelope holding it. Oskar seaches the city for every family named Black in hopes they can tell him the secret of the key, in hopes of understanding his father better. Oskar's grandmother lives across the street from him, and she struggles with the loss of her son while remembering her own survival during the bombing of Dresden and the damage it did to her family. Jonathan Safran Foer explores the psychological fallout from 9/11 through an unlikely boy whose pain and ideas ring all too true. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has received high praise with the Rocky Mountain News saying, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a complex, hilarious, tear-jerking and terribly intimate story."