Uncle Hugo’s is the oldest surviving science fiction bookstore in the United States. We opened for business on March 2, 1974. To encourage you to help us celebrate Uncle Hugo’s 37th Anniversary, we’re having a sale. Come into either Uncle Hugo’s or Uncle Edgar’s and get an extra 10% off everything except gift certificates. A discount card will save you even more–you’ll get both the 10% savings from the sale and the 10% savings from the discount card. (Sale prices apply to in-store sales, but not to mail orders.)
The 37th Anniversary sale lasts Friday, February 25 through Sunday, March 6. This gives you two weekends to take advantage of the sale.
Award News
The Mystery Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. The nominees for Best Novel are Caught by Harlan Coben ($27.95, $9.99 pb due mid- March), Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-May), Faithful Place by Tana French ($25.95), The Queen of Patpong byTimothy Hallinan ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early May), The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March), and I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman ($25.99, $14.99 trade pb due early May).
The nominees for Best First Novel by an American Author are Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva ($24.99), The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-April), The Serialist: A Novel by David Gordon ($15.00), Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto ($25.00), and Snow Angels by James Thompson ($14.00).
The nominees for Best Paperback Original are Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard ($15.00), The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn ($15.00), Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski ($13.99), Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis ($15.00), and Ten Little Herrings by L. C. Tyler ($14.95).
The nominees in many other categories are posted at the Mystery Writers of America website and at Uncle Edgar’s.
The nominees for the Dilys Award, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association to the mystery title they have most enjoyed selling, are Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill ($25.00), The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March), Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane ($26.99), Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny ($24.99), Once a Spy by Keith Thomson ($7.99) and Savages by Don Winslow ($25.00, $15.00 trade pb due mid-March).
Many mystery awards are presented at the Left Coast Crime Convention. The nominees for the Lefty Award, given to the most humorous mystery, are Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews ($24.99), Swift Justice by Larna DiSilverio ($24.99), Old Dogs by Donna Moore ($15.00), Revenge for Old Times’ Sake by Kris Neri ($16.95) and The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein by J. Michael Orenduff ($14.95).
The nominees for the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery are A Night of Long Knives by Rebecca Cantrell ($24.99, $14.99 trade pb due mid-April), Murder for Greenhorns by Robert Kresge ($15.95), City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley ($24.99), The Demon’s Parchment by
Jeri Westerson ($25.99) and The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear ($25.99, $14.99 trade pb due early March).
The Hillerman Sky Award (a special award in honor of the convention’s New Mexico location, to the mystery that best captures the landscape of the Southwest). The nominees are Wild Penance by Sandy Ault ($14.00), The Bone Fire by Christine Barber ($24.99), The Spider’s Web by Margaret Coel ($24.95) and Snare by Deborah J. Ledford.
The Watson nominees (another special award given this year to the mystery novel with the best sidekick) are Wild Penance by Sandy Ault ($14.00), Dead Lift by Rachel Brady ($24.95 hc or $14.95 trade pb), Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein ($25.00), Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson ($25.95) and To Fetch a Thief by Spencer Quinn ($25.00).
How’s Business?
By Don Blyly
Business has been terrible, thanks to the weather. Business was up for nine of the first ten months of 2010. Business was up nicely for the first week of November. Then winter hit hard. Saturday is usually by far our best day of the week. Of the eight Saturdays leading up to Christmas, three Saturdays we were forecast to have heavy snow (and often the forecast is more important than how much snow we really receive) and three Saturdays we had ice storms. The two Saturdays with good weather, sales were way up, but not enough to make up for the other six Saturdays. For that eight week period, our sales were down more than $10,000 from the same period the year before. The Saturday of the big blizzard, Uncle Hugo’s saw two customers and $25 in sales, while Uncle Edgar’s didn’t see a single customer. Of the four staff people on duty, I was the only one who had driven to work, so an hour after the bus system for the metro area was shut down, the four of us dug out my car and I gave everybody else rides to their homes before I started trying to dig my way into my driveway at home.
While the weather was less hostile (though very cold) in January, the city did such a bad job of plowing the streets that many people are hesitant to park at the meters, and the piles of snow has wiped out half the dentist’s parking lot, so business has continued to suffer. Let me remind you of the parking ramp on the far side of the former Sears building. If you park there and take your parking ticket with you into the Global Marketplace and buy anything from any vendor, they can stamp your parking ticket for 3 hours of free parking.
People have been waiting for years for the sequel to the wonderful and award-winning fantasy The Name of the Wind ($8.99) by Patrick Rothfuss. The Wise Man’s Fear ($29.95) is finally coming in early March (and received a starred review in Publishers Weekly). The publisher contacted us on October 15 to suggest a date for Patrick to sign at Uncle Hugo’s. I told them that we could have the signing on that date and suggested a time, but also suggested that a weekend signing would draw more people than a Thursday signing. I never heard back from the publisher. In January, with 100 copies of the hardcover on order for the Thursday signing, I tried to find out from the publisher what was going on, and still received no response. So I e-mailed to Patrick to see if he knew what was going on. He e-mailed back that the publisher had dropped Uncle Hugo’s from the tour, but that he’d try to find time to drive over for a signing after he was done with the publisher’s tour. We don’t yet have a date set–watch the website for updated information.
Once again we had lots more new titles than we had space for in the paper newsletter. We had to cut about half of the listings. Most paranormal romances, gaming tie-in novels, action adventure series titles, kids and young adult novels, and true crime titles were eliminated and many book descriptions were shortened for the paper newsletter, but full information is at our website.
