With only one month remaining before the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Borders and Waldenbooks stores across the United States are busy preparing to host over 400,000 expected fans at in-store "Midnight Magic" parties that will begin the evening of Friday, 15 July 2005 and continue until 12:01 a.m. Saturday, 16 July 2005 the first moment the book is officially available for sale.

Update: One month before its release, Barnes & Noble pre-orders for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" have topped 750,000 copies, well ahead of the pace of the last Potter book, which came out two years ago. The new Potter book, the sixth in J.K. Rowling's fantasy series, is scheduled to come out July 16 with a first printing of 10.8 million copies.

The "Midnight Magic" parties will treat Potter followers to fun-filled activities throughout the store, including face painting, mask-making, science experiments, magic crafts, and of course, all things Harry Potter. In addition, the stores will have freebies available at many of the activity stations.

Back in 2003, the fifth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", broke all first-day sales records with approximately 750,000 copies sold through our Borders and Waldenbooks stores in the U.S.

時隔兩年，哈利·波特又再捲土重來！2005年7月16日，全球同步發行，推出J·K·羅琳最新力作《哈利·波特與混血王子》英文版。《哈利·波特與混血王子》繼續哈利·波特在霍格沃茨魔法學校第六年的故事。故事開始時，伏地魔的力量和他的追隨者日益增加，正義與邪惡的戰鬥已經展開。作者說過，混血王子既不是哈利，也不是伏地魔。羅琳構思《哈利·波特與混血王子》的開篇第一章已有13年之久，引起人們的濃厚興趣，會在此書中賜死一位主角。想知道是誰嗎？答案就擺在你的選擇中！

Perfect coffee table book for the holidays

From the Editors of Vanity Fair "Oscar Night : 75 Years of Hollywood Parties" with 384 pages filled with full-page and, often, double-page candids of famous faces on Oscar nights from the first giveaway in 1929 to the most recent one in February. With most eye popping images is the one with Elizabeth Taylor wearing a 69.42 carat diamond as she enters the 1969 Oscar party with husband Richard Burton.

Another book is "The Bad & the Beautiful". A gorgeous compilation of 160 photographs by Ellen Graham and written by John Loring covering a wide range of faces, including Lena Horne, Joe Louis, Jack Nicholson, Marlene Dietrich, Carmen Dell’Orefice, Al Hirschfeld, Sophia Loren, Gloria Swanson, Bernadette Peters and Kevin Kline and Monaco’s Prince Albert, as well as various socialites and street subjects.

"Hollywood Life: The Glamorous Homes of Vintage Hollywood", featuring photographs by the late Eliot Elisofon. It contains extraordinary glimpses, in gorgeous color, of such showplace homes as those of George Cukor, Bill and Edie Goetz, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Rock Hudson, Kirk and Anne Douglas, Edith Head, Natalie Wood, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlton and Lydia Heston, Gypsy Rose Lee, Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick, Bobby Darin and numerous others.

If Jack can do it, so can you

According to three-times Oscar winning actor, Jack Nicholson, "You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police". Besides being a great liar, he is also a great lover. He could make love several times a night, according to a new book titled "Jack: The Great Seducer". One unnamed woman in the book says "He could make love all night long. I stopped counting at seven."

At one time Jack Nicholson shared one lover - artist and actress named Denise - with Warren Beatty and film producer Robert Evans. However, she broke off the relationship when she discovered the three men were trading stories about her.

Jack Nicholson has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, and he´s won three times: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest (1975, from the book by Ken Kesey), for Terms of Endearment (1984), and for As Good As It Gets (1997, with Helen Hunt).

His crooked leer and wild-man attitude are famous, but Nicholson is also known as a powerful dramatic actor. He first made a splash as hippie lawyer in Easy Rider (1969, with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper), and three decades later he remains a bankable star in such films as About Schmidt (2002), Anger Management (2003, with Adam Sandler and Something´s Gotta Give (2003, with Diane Keaton and Keanu Reeves). He has also appeared in Chinatown (1974, opposite Faye Dunaway), A Few Good Men (1992, with Demi Moore and Tom Cruise) and as Jimmy Hoffa in Hoffa (1992).

Clay Aiken new book

clay Clay Aiken will release a new album and his first book on Nov. 16, 2004. The as-yet-untitled RCA set is a holiday collection, while the Random House inspirational memoir "Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life" explores Aiken´s journey, from special education teacher to pop star.

According to Aiken publist, it will coincide with both releases are a handful of TV appearances, including the American Music Awards (Nov. 14), "Larry King Live" (Nov. 15), "Regis and Kelly" (Nov. 17), "The Today Show" (Nov. 17), "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" (Dec. 6). An NBC holiday special will air on a date to be announced. Aiken will be performing at Paramount´s Carowinds on Oct. 16 and at two sold out shows at the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh on Oct. 18, 2004.

New TV show based on Cosby book

Fox TV has given a script commitment to a comedy project based on Bill Cosby´s book Congratulations! Now What? A Book for Graduates. The show will focus on the relationship between a man and his son, who moves home after getting his degree.

Cosby will serve as an executive producer. The book is a compilation of wisdom that Cosby, a frequent speaker at college commencements, offers to freshly minted graduates on everything from résumé polishing to getting out of their parents´ house, the sooner the better.

John Barth New Book

John Barth, the postmodern master, is back with his sixteenth book The Book of Ten Nights and a Night: Eleven Stories and third collection of stories, which gathers for the first time in one volume stories previously published in various journals. Exploring ideas of narrative frames, stories within stories, and the uncanny power that language has in our lives, he offers the thrilling blend of playfulness and illuminating insight that has marked him as one of America’s most distinguished writers. Here are tales of aging, time, possibility, and relationships. And in typically Barthian fashion, they are framed by the narration of a veteran writer, Graybard, and his flirtatious, insouciant muse, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). During the eleven days that follow September 11, 2001, Graybard and WYSIWYG debate the meaning and relevance of writing and storytelling in the wake of disaster, or TEOTWAW(A)KI— The End Of The World As We (Americans) Know It. The Book of Ten Nights and a Night is vintage Barth, sure to appeal to his loyal fans and find new readers touched by his irreverent but deeply human perspective on how writers can respond to the emotional and ethical demands of tragic events.