Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling

Read: August 2001

After another summer of mistreatment at the hands of the Dursley's, Harry is excited to return to Hogwarts for another year. But over the summer the tension in the magic community has been ratcheted up: a murderer named Sirius Black is on the loose, and Harry keeps seeing a strange dog out of the corner of his eye. Even Hogwarts seems to have grown darker, for now there are terrifying, emotion sucking Dementors guarding the gates. You see it turns out that Sirius Black was in league with Voldemorte, and was responsible for revealing the secret of the Potter's whereabouts. And now he is after Harry.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is perhaps the most popular of all the series, marking a transition from the magical early books to a slightly darker, complex, and psychologically disturbing series it became. It also introduces us to Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, two of Harry's most enduring and important accomplices. It is here where Harry begins to demonstrate his skill with magic, and find continuity with his father, in the form of his patronus. The events in the Shrieking Shack reveal great secrets, and offer one of the most exciting scenes in the entire series. If you haven’t become a Harry Potter fanatic by the end of the first chapter of the first book, then it is here where you will find that you cannot put the books down.

8 out of 10