In the wake of the major theft of historical 
documents this summer from the Maryland Historical Society, this PW blog turned up a short list of most stolen books from bookstores. According to various sources, the 5 most stolen books are: anything by Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs, On the Road by Kerouac, The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, and anything by Martin Amis. (Links are to EPL)
Similarly, I saw this article from a Pittsburgh paper about cookbooks leaving the shelves at libraries. Apparently, sometimes people watch cooking shows and are inspired to improve their cooking skills, but not to check out the books! Libraries use different methods to cope with 
the issue, such as posting notices that books may be returned in the book drop without questions being asked. Let’s hope both trends are not very widespread.
Shira S.
PS- I don’t have to tell you what a terrific cookbook selection we have, with over 1500 items!