The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945. A boy named Daniel awakes to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves. Daniel loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind, and he sets out to find the rest of the author's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written.

Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

Read Colleen Venable's Review of Shadow of the Wind.