#8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
784 pages
$34.99

There's no point in trying to finesse the importance of Harry Potter. In seven books Rowling proved that books can still be a true global mass medium, and that significant chunks of the known world can still embrace a single story. Deathly Hallows finds Rowling is in fine form, pulling all the stops she'd been saving up. She gives us wartime gloom, the crackling three-sided chemistry of Harry and Ron and Hermione, and an epic, cataclysmic finale, among many other minor treats. This isn't the most elegant of the Potter volumes, but it feels like an ending, the final iteration of Rowling's abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming importance of continuing to love in the face of death.