While two mystery titles--P.D. James's The Private Patient and Anne Perry's A Christmas Grace--are the No. 2 and 3 bestsellers at Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pa., this season, the No. 1 title has nothing to do with crime. It's The Fallingwater Cookbook: Elsie Henderson's Recipes & Memories by Suzanne Martinson.
The book's popularity here is no mystery, however. The store is located about an hour's drive from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Fallingwater, which is now a museum. Sales of the book were boosted by an event with Martinson and Elsie Henderson on November 21 that drew 150 attendees. (Last year's bestseller for Mystery Lovers Bookshop was Loving Frank, Nancy Horan's novelization about the relationship between Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney.)
Although primarily a specialty store, Mystery Lovers carries books in other genres because it's the only bookstore in the community. In addition, special orders for the holidays are "way ahead of last year," said Mary Alice Gorman, who owns Mystery Lovers Bookshop with her husband, Richard Goldman. "I think it's a convenience thing, and also that people are trying not to go into stores because they'll spend more money."
The store's holiday gift guide showcases a range of books, from David Liss's historical mystery The Whiskey Rebels and Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded to a pop-up edition of The Nutcracker (the theme of the store's window display this year). Leading in children's book sales are Lemony Snicket's The Lump of Coal and Tomie dePaola's pop-up Brava, Strega Nona!.
Mystery Lovers stocks such sidelines as games, puzzles, calendars and gourmet coffees and teas. A popular present is the "Disappearing Dinosaur Mug." When the cup is filled with hot liquid, the colorful dinosaur decorating it transforms into a skeleton--like the ones on display in the revamped dinosaur hall at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in nearby Pittsburgh.
Sales of games and jigsaw puzzles--more than 200 varieties are stocked during the holidays--have increased this year because cost-conscious consumers are attracted to them. "Giving a family gift is more appealing than buying four or six separate ones," said Gorman, who recommends Bananagrams ("a less competitive, no-math version of Scrabble") and the card game Blink.
Overall, store profits are down 1%. "It's not that sales are down," Gorman said. "It's that expenses have gone up--garbage removal, shipping, utilities, you name it." Online sales account for just under half of the store's business. The store offered free shipping on website orders for four days, beginning the evening before Thanksgiving and ending at midnight the following Monday. "Although we ship to all states, we had a huge number of online orders from local people on Cyber Monday," Gorman said. The store was bustling, too, over Thanksgiving weekend, including a number of customers who were shopping early to allow time for shipping gifts to out-of-town recipients.
New this season is a promotion offering a $10 gift certificate with every purchase of $100 or more. Although it's offered for both in-store and website sales, said Gorman, "we've done it to be competitive online."
Gorman is "guardedly optimistic" about the holiday season, due in part to steady purchases of gift certificates, which so far are on par with last year. This might contribute to substantial traffic the day after Christmas due to one of the store's marketing strategies. Every gift certificate comes with a special offer: if it's redeemed on December 26, the least expensive paperback a customer buys is free.
"It encourages our customers' family members to get a gift certificate from us instead of just any bookstore," said Gorman. "We have a huge redemption of gift certificates that day, and each year we find it increases more." In addition to boosting sales, since shoppers typically spend more than the value of the gift certificate, it's an incentive for booklovers to treat themselves to some page turners. With Christmas come and gone, said Gorman, "it's the day when readers can get back to reading."--Shannon McKenna Schmidt