The release date for the English version of 'The Amulet of Samarkand' by
Jonathan Stroud is Sep 2003. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
At the age of five, his original parents sold him to the government, whereupon he was sent to live as an apprentice to a master magician. Nathaniel is a kid magician-in-training. The British Empire is ruled by strong wizards, and Nathaniel is informed that he must make the "ultimate sacrifice" in order to fulfill his "noble destiny."
As if he wasn't already tough enough, Nathaniel's master, Arthur Underwood, is a middle-ranking wizard in the Ministry of Internal Affairs who is icy, patronizing, and harsh. The boy's only hope is Martha Underwood, the master's wife, who really cares for him and repays it with intense love. Over the years, Nathaniel gets along with everyone in the Underwood home rather well, up to the summer before he turns eleven. When he is publicly humiliated by the vicious magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his spineless master who does not stand up for him, everything changes.
Nathaniel swears retaliation. He practices magic and reads magical literature while suffering from a Faustian fever, all the while attempting to seem like a servant of his master. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine.