When I opened my birthday present, aside from the gift itself, out fell two twenties and a ten. And the first thing I thought was, Now I can buy more groceries.

As you know, sometimes the life of a writer sucks. But I do have a summer software contract lined up, which should fund this year’s big book giveaway. As we say: I’m just writing to make money until my software-development career takes off.

Nonetheless, I did manage to stop by the Used Book Superstore yesterday, on a lark. I told myself I’d only check for Holly Lisle titles that I didn’t have. Didn’t find any. (No surprise.) And then I happened through the foreign-language section and the advertising-and-marketing section and the religion section.

Not far from the Six Duchies lies Bingtown, hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships- rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Bingtown’s Old Traders, their wealth eroded by northern wars and the rapacity of southern pirates, now face an influx of upstart merchants who bring change to a complex society.

I first considered Robin Hobb when I noticed her blurb on the back of Talyn: “Yet again, Holly Lisle creates a world and society that completely absorbs the reader. An unflinching examination of relationships amidst a clash of societies. This is not your average fat fantasy book.”

Of course, I agreed with every word of that endorsement. So when I saw Ship of Magic in the Used Book Superstore, just one shelf above a Holly Lisle title (which I’ve been collecting), I took a closer look. The story sounded like it might engage me. And I figured, if Robin knows good stuff when she reads it, maybe she’s written some good stuff, too.

… and one that is currently red.

These are not just books I happened to have lying around. On the contrary, I picked them up while browsing the Used Book Superstore (all except for the red one), specifically because I enjoyed them. They aren’t necessarily my favorite of favorites. (For that, see the Talyn giveaway, which is at least one of the favorites of my favorites.) But I rated each one at least 4 stars strong. And each one has vibrant and memorable characters, which is the most important element in a story.

These four books come from a range of genres: romantic comedy, sci-fi comedy, autobiography, and classic mystery.

See at the bottom of this post for how to enter the giveaway.

Here are the books:

Every time I drove down Route 3A through Burlington, MA, I’d see a huge storefront with the words “Used Book Superstore” posted over it. I always wanted to peek inside. I mean, a used book superstore? Who ever heard of such a thing? There are large book retailers, like Barnes & Noble. There are smaller, used book stores, like Annie’s Book Stop, specializing in a narrow segment of books. (In the case of Annie’s, they specialize in modern, fast-moving, mass-market paperback fiction.) But how do you combine the two? How do you make a used-book superstore work?

So I always wanted to peek inside, see what this mutant retail outlet was all about. But I never found time. Until a couple weeks ago, I felt restless, and I remembered the Used Book Superstore. And I spent way more time than I intended, browsing through a massive spread of titles, all cost-effective and pre-read. I even found a couple of Holly Lisle’s titles, which I naturally snatched up to add to my collection. I found a copy of the complete X-Files Book of the Unexplained, which because it was “paperback,” only cost $1.99, all 688 pages of it.

But one of the more apropos selections of the day turned out to be Scott Adam’s The Joy of Work: Dilbert’s Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers.