In 1945, at the age of ten, Daniel Sempere wakes us in a panic, realizing that he can no longer remember the face of his mother, who died six years earlier. His father, a bookseller there in Barcelona, takes him that morning to the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books, about which he explains that 
 "This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down,, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody's best friend. Now they have only us, Daniel. [...]According to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, whichever he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive. It's a very important promise. For life," explained my father. "Today it's your turn." 
 The book he selects is called The Shadow of the Wind, by an obscure author named Julian Carax. Daniel falls in love with the book and discovers when he looks for more novels by this writer that they are particularly hard to come by, because not only did very few copies ever sell, but some mysterious figure has been seeking out copies of Carax's novels and burning them, so that it is quite possible that Daniel's copy of The Shadow of the Wind may be the only one left in the world. 
 Over the course of Zafon's novel (which is also The Shadow of the Wind), Daniel is not only approached and stalked by this devilish figure but also works to unravel the mystery that Carax presents: who was he and who is determined to destroy his life's work, and why? At the same time, we follow Daniel through his teenage years as he matures, struggling through not only the normal difficulties of adolescence but also through the dangerous political climate of Spain under the fascists. 
 The novel mixes a wide range of elements into a gripping whole. It was intensely readable while also having some substance to it--in other words, just about perfect for the end of summer, as it stimulates thoughts while still going down easily. 
 Incidentally, this is a translation from Spanish; the novel spent five years on the Spanish bestseller list, with quite a lot of that time being at the top of the list.