‘Tis the season…

…to sit around doing next to nothing, at least in our house. I should have spent the past several weeks peppering you with newsletters, reminding you of all the perfect gifts reposing on the virtual shelves of LB’s eBay Bookstore, and instead I’ve done sweet Fanny Adams, and it’s hard to say why. My Frequent Companion and I spent Thanksgiving in Scotland, as the guests of an Unemployed Former Talk Show Host of Scottish Origin, and I suspect we came back slightly jet-lagged. Alas, we seem to have embraced the ensuing inertia as a Way of Life.

Ah well. I’ve bestirred myself as best I can, and will supply some seasonal suggestions to gladden the hearts of those bold-faced names on your gift list without kicking holes in your budget. But first a couple of announcements:

~ If you missed A Walk Among the Tombstones during its too-brief theatrical run, the DVD goes on sale January 13. I think it ought to work almost as well on the small screen.

~ Defender of the Innocent, the complete 12-story Ehrengraf collection, is still available as a Subterranean Press hardcover, and in ebook and audio form as well. The Mysterious Bookshop and VJ Books have a limited number of autographed copies.

~Don Sobczak, whose audio rendition of Defender has been winning ears and minds everywhere, has taken on the tricky task of bringing John Warren Wells to life. First up is one of JWW’s best-selling titles, Wide Open: New Modes of Marriage, and I think audio fans will like what he’s done with it.

And now let’s see what we’ve got in the bookstore:

1. A Walk Among the Tombstones. No hardcover copies and no DVDs, but we’ve got signed books in English, French, Polish and Spanish, signed movie posters w/ free lobby cards, and the signed audiobook. Limited quantities on all of these!

2. 8 Matthew Scudder signed paperbacks. Make eight people happy or one person positively ecstatic. We call these books “reading copies,” but they’re new books, individually signed, and the price is $49.99. We have four sets left, and once they’re sold, they’re gone.

3. 8 Bernie Rhodenbarr paperbacks. Same deal, different character. We’ve got five sets of these.

4. Any writers on your list? Jerrold Mundis explains how to Break Writer’s Block Now, and you can get ten friends scribbling furiously for a total price of $29.99 postpaid. Or give them signed trade paperbacks of Write For Your Life or Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. Or a rare hardcover first edition of Telling Lies. Or how about a thirty-year-old copy of Fiction Writers Market? The market information is laughably out-of-date, but the essays and articles are timeless, and the price is right.

5. Bernie Rhodenbarr’s latest adventure came out a year ago this month. Believe it or not, there are people around who don’t yet own a copy. (I know, I know. Go figure.) That’s opportunity knocking—for a good friend, pick up a signed trade paperback of The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons; for someone you genuinely adore, take a deep breath and spring for the Limited Leather-Bound Collector’s Edition. (It comes with a free signed copy of the paperback. So you could buy someone a handsome gift while picking up a choice reading copy for yourself. Or the other way around. I’m, like, just saying…)

6. Bargains galore! Of the 136 titles on offer, 77 listings are prices at $9.99 or less, most of them with free shipping.

7. But not everything’s that inexpensive. Here, for convenience, are some high-ticket items.