Every year when the mistletoe goes up, the plea goes out from America’s dwindling band of independent booksellers: Please, people, keep us alive! Buy our books, give them as gifts!

For decades, small bookshops have battled the twin menaces of massive, price-cutting chains and the vast, easily browsed shelves of on-line retailers.

Recommended Stories

Appeals court rejects DOJ effort to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots, teeing up Supreme Court gambit

Illegal immigrant charged with impersonating CIA official using scam agency

Russia shuts down last independent newspaper