"Prince" already has worldwide pre-orders of more than 2 million copies, 1.4 million from Amazon alone. Half of those are in the United States, so many that the United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service are teaming up to deliver them all.
Dracula, however, has nothing on the great white shark. Susan Casey went in search of the vicious sea creatures in one of their native habitats, a string of wind-whipped rock outcroppings called the Farallon Islands, about 25 miles west of San Francisco. (Indeed, the islands are considered within "The awful betrayal!" said Katie Oxman, 13, of New Canaan, Connecticut, just minutes after reading the climax. It was so shocking, she said, she screamed out to her father. They had become attached to the characters over the years, worrying and rooting for them during difficult times. "It didn't seem to drone on and on," she said. "There was a lot of stuff in the fourth book that could have been cut out, and the fifth book was really long. In the sixth book, everything fit in."
"The awful betrayal!" said Katie Oxman, 13, of New Canaan, Connecticut, just minutes after reading the climax. It was so shocking, she said, she screamed out to her father. They had become attached to the characters over the years, worrying and rooting for them during difficult times. Potter Web site MuggleNet even offers a page of rumor debunkings, including "[Hogwarts Headmaster] Dumbledore is not a relative of Harry," "Harry Potter will not be the new Minister of Magic" and "There will be no character named Icicle." The book is the sixth in the series and has sat in the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com's best seller list since it was announced late last year. Indeed, a couple characters were knocked off in previous books, and ugly politics hung heavy over "Order of the Phoenix." Potter Web site MuggleNet even offers a page of rumor debunkings, including "[Hogwarts Headmaster] Dumbledore is not a relative of Harry," "Harry Potter will not be the new Minister of Magic" and "There will be no character named Icicle." "I'm just trying to think of a really good plot that isn't like Harry Potter," she said.
"I loved the book. I hated the ending," said 39-year-old Shelly Blackmore of Centerville, Ohio. "There is a death. I sobbed. It was horrible."