Lawrence.com

New York — Danny Bonaduce's memoirs and a collection of Mumia Abu-Jamal's prison writings are among the few books still hugging the shelves at Coliseum Books.

The stock is dwindling fast as longtime book lovers and bargain hunters flock to the famed midtown bookstore that will shut its doors next week after 27 years.

"We're closing the doors next Tuesday and all the shelving and fixtures have to be out by Jan. 31," co-owner George Leibson said. "We're still looking for a new space, but we haven't found anything yet."

The Spartan store, with its industrial lighting and 16,000 square feet of space, has teemed for weeks with shoppers, picking through the last of the store's heavily discounted stock.

"I can't resist a sale, but it's been pretty picked clean by now," said shopper David Martin as he looked for a book to buy. "All that seems to be left are biographies of people I've never heard of."

Other shoppers came just for the memories.

"I'm here kind of just to reminisce," said actress and tour guide Amanda Gallaghre.

"In the early part of my acting career I came here to buy the great plays. When I became a tour guide I came here to get books about New York. And I always came to get books that I otherwise would not have known about," she said. "It's the end of an era for books in New York."

Coliseum has stood on the corner of 57th Street and Broadway since 1974, just a block from Carnegie Hall and The Russian Tea Room.

But now, the store is the latest in a string of Manhattan businesses hit hard by rising rents and real estate booms. Leibson was paying $1.2 million a year, but the rent was about to double. The struggling store, like most independent booksellers, also faced competition from a Barnes & Noble store in Lincoln Center.