Buy This Book: "The Witch of Portobello" by Paulo Coelho (Perfect for nieces and other magical beings)

Spent some quality time with my fabulous niece Jenny last week, and Paulo Coelho's wonderful book The Witch of Portobellocame up in conversation. It's been a while since I read it, but it's one of those books that swept through book clubs a few years ago. I immediately hopped online and ordered a copy for Jenny to read on the flight home, and I highly recommend it for the Christmas stocking of the open-minded, free-spirited reader in your life.

From Margaret Flanagan's Booklist review:

Best-selling fabulist Coelho continues to transform his trademark combination of mysticism and storytelling into spellbinding examinations of the human soul. In this deceptively simple novel, a bereaved lover attempts to chronicle, dissect, and comprehend the often-twisted path followed by Athena, otherwise known as the Witch of Portobello Road. An orphaned Romanian gypsy, adopted as an infant by adoring Lebanese parents, Athena recognized and struggled with the power of her magical gifts at an early age. Spurred on by truths and passions inaccessible to most of her contemporaries, she traipsed around Europe and the Middle East in search of acceptance, enlightenment, and a truer path...

Be intrigued. Be very intrigued...