Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (Read by Jim
Dale)
Brand
New (still shrink wrapped): Unabridged. 8.3 hours
7CDs
It's hard to fall in love with an earnest, appealing young
hero like Harry Potter and then to watch helplessly as he steps into terrible
danger! And in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,
the much anticipated sequel to the award-winning Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone, he is in terrible danger indeed. As if it's not bad
enough that after a long summer with the horrid Dursleys he is thwarted in his
attempts to hop the train to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to
begin his second year. But when his only transportation option is a magical
flying car, it is just his luck to crash into a valuable (but clearly vexed)
Whomping Willow. Still, all this seems like a day in the park compared to what
happens that fall within the haunted halls of Hogwarts.
Chilling, malevolent voices whisper from the walls only to Harry, and it
seems certain that his classmate Draco Malfoy is out to get him. Soon it's not
just Harry who is worried about survival, as dreadful things begin to happen at
Hogwarts. The mysteriously gleaming, foot-high words on the wall proclaim,
"The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened. Enemies of the Heir,
Beware." But what exactly does it mean? Harry, Hermione, and Ron do
everything that is wizardly possible--including risking their own lives--to
solve this 50-year-old, seemingly deadly mystery. This deliciously suspenseful
novel is every bit as gripping, imaginative, and creepy as the first; familiar
student concerns--fierce rivalry, blush-inducing crushes, pedantic
professors--seamlessly intertwine with the bizarre, horrific, fantastical, or
just plain funny. Once again, Rowling writes with a combination of wit, whimsy,
and a touch of the macabre that will leave readers young and old desperate for
the next installment.
About the Author J K Rowling:
Joanne Rowling was born in South Gloucestershire, England on 31 July
1965, on the outskirts of Bristol. There is some confusion as to exactly where; Rowling has said she was born in Chipping Sodbury, whereas her birth certificate apparently claims she was born in the Cottage Hospital at Yate. Her sister Di was born when Rowling was almost two
. The family moved to Winterbourne, Bristol when Rowling was four, and then to Tutshill, near Chepstow, Wales at the age of nine. She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College. In December 1990, Rowling's mother succumbed to a decade-long battle with multiple
sclerosis.
After studying French and Classics at the University of Exeter, with a year of study in Paris, she moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. During this period she had the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry while she was on a four-hour, delayed train trip between Manchester and
London. When she had reached her destination, she began writing immediately .
Rowling then moved to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October
1992. They had one child, Jessica Isabel, before divorcing in 1993. Their daughter was named after Rowling's heroine, Jessica
Mitford.
In December, 1994, she and her daughter moved to be near her sister in
Edinburgh. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel, doing some of the work in local Edinburgh cafes whenever she could get Jessica to fall
asleep. There was a rumour that she wrote in local cafés in order to escape from her unheated flat, but in a 2001 BBC interview Rowling remarked, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat, in Edinburgh, in mid-winter; it had heating"
In 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual
typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a young reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was handed to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it.
. A year later she was finally given the greenlight (and a £1500 advance) by the editor Barry Cunningham from the small publisher
Bloomsbury. Although Cunningham happily agreed to publish the book, he claims he advised her to get a day job, as she had little chance of making money in children's
books. She then received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue
writing. The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc, who paid Rowling more than 0,000. Rowling has said she "nearly died" when she heard the
news. In June, 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an intial print run of only 1000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued at between £16,000 and £25,000 each.
Five months later it won its first award, a Nestle Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and, later the Children's Book Award. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the States under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a change Rowling now claims she regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.
.
In December 1999, the third Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,won the Smarties Prize, in the process making Rowling the first person to win the award three times
running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January, 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it narrowly lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of
Beowulf. That June, the Queen honored Rowling by making her an Officer of the Order of the British
Empire.
To date, six of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter series, one for each of Harry's school years, have already been published and all have broken sales records. Upon its publication, both the fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the sixth, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, were the fastest-selling books in
history.
Rowling is currently writing the seventh and final book of the series. Its name is currently
unknown. (from Wikipedia)
