Re:

'A huge amount of security'

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 "I really liked it," Heyman said Tuesday, noting that the book was shorter than "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the two previous releases. "The Historian" (Little, Brown), the debut novel by Elizabeth Kostova, concerns a teenage American girl who stumbles on an old book in her father's library. But George Gelzer, 10, of Wallingford, Connecticut, was "freaked out" by the ending. He likened the death in "Half-Blood Prince" to losing a Jedi knight in the "Star Wars" saga. "It's not going to be the same," he said. In her book "The Devil's Teeth" (Henry Holt), Casey offers the story of her travels among the sharks, offering sharp prose and pointed observations about
her fishy fellows. In May, a bookmaker suspended betting on the death of a certain character after suspecting a leak. Rowling has released just three chapter titles -- "Spinners End" (Chapter 2), "Draco's Detour" (Chapter 6) and "Felix Felicis" (Chapter 14) -- and security is extremely tight, with booksellers selli "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." The most anticipated of the bunch arrives July 16 with the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Potter fans, of course, face a far darker prospect than the departure of a single character. The series itself must end -- Rowling expects to start working on the seventh Potter book at the end of the year. The scene is likely to repeat itself at midnight local time in the United States and Canada, and fans are snapping up the book in spectacular fashion.