'Tis a few weeks before Christmas and wherever one looks, gift items are calling, including some books. The authors are hoping buyers will appear, to snatch up their stories now that the season is here.

There are memoirs and memories, warm fuzzies galore, there are mothers and misers and helping the poor. All have happy endings, all are packaged up neat, for a last-minute gift or a treasure to keep.

And now comes John Snyder with a keepsake to share, about a golden ring and a young girl who cared. He is standing at a table in a Bowie bookstore as holiday shoppers browse. Copies of The Golden Ring: A Christmas Story are laid out before him in a row of gold and blue like smartly wrapped gifts.

"Hi, I'm John; I'm the author," he says, warmly greeting patrons at the Borders Books and Music store.

Snyder, of Gambrills has made his first book a full-time job, closing down his public relations firm and hitting the road for more than 50 signings this season. He tries to engage as many customers as he can, telling them The Golden Ring is based on a Christmas story his grandmother told him about her childhood.

He assures them the tale of a young girl's memorable Christmas in 1918 is suitable for all ages. He chats with them about their families, their holiday traditions.

With Joan Pitkin, he talks about politics. She represents Bowie in the Maryland House of Delegates. He ran for a seat in the state legislature when he was a 26-year-old parole officer. She is shopping for a gift for her sister and brother-in-law who met in Pennsylvania. And Snyder's book is set in the coal country of Western Pennsylvania.

"This is the one I think they would enjoy," she says. "It sounds heartwarming for Christmas."

Snyder is not the only author to tap into the spirit of the holiday season. As he signed books, the shelves marked "bestsellers" held several copies of John Grisham's Skipping Christmas, which has spent three weeks on the Publisher's Weekly bestsellers list. On a nearby display table were copies of He Sees You When You're Sleeping, a holiday suspense story by popular authors Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark.

Then there were the shelves lined with old and new favorites, such as Christmas in My Heart, The Woodcutters Christmas, The Christmas Barn and Christmas on Jane Street.

These books, and many others, stake out a ground between mainstream novels and traditional novelties. They are known as "gift" books, and they differ from any other book you can give as a gift - whether it's Robert Ludlum's new novel or a coffee table photo essay on the Chesapeake Bay - by their size and seasonal theme. They are all small - 5-by 7-inches is common - and easy to read.

Most often, small gift books are full of quotations or anecdotes, and those are available now, too: Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Treasury or a new book on How to Be Santa Claus. But in the past few years, Christmas gift books have grown to include narratives with developed plots, like Grisham's tale of a grumpy guy who wants to avoid holiday hassles.

"People are in the mood for books which are in the spirit of the time," says David Rosenthal, publisher of Simon & Schuster.

And publishers' seasonal offerings reflect that.

Gift books are "a safe thing to give to people, and you can get them for just about anybody," says Michael Sullivan, owner of Reprint Book Shop in Washington.

They are usually less expensive than full-length novels, tasteful for all audiences, attractive as a keepsake and appealing for their portable size. But the books "have a shelf-life of four to six weeks and that's it," says Sullivan.

Small books with big impact

Most gift books may not become classics like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol or Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, but it is hard to dispute their popularity, especially after an advertising executive from Salt Lake City found unprecedented success with a holiday story he originally wrote for his daughters.

Richard Paul Evans wrote The Christmas Box in 1992, printed it at a local copy shop and gave out 20 books to family members. They passed them on to friends and neighbors until people started asking Evans for more. The next year, he self-published 18,000 copies, the bulk in November, and advertised on bus placards and Salt Lake radio stations. Local bookstores ran out before Christmas.

Evans decided to go big - he printed half a million in 1994 and 400,000 sold. In 1995, Simon & Schuster bought the hardcover rights to The Christmas Box.

When Evans started out, he says publishers didn't want a Christmas story. "Hey, we have Dickens," he was told.

But the book is now approaching 8 million copies sold around the world, and it has spawned two sequels, a CBS made-for-TV movie, a Hallmark special of the sequel and The Christmas Box Foundation, which funds shelters for abused and neglected children.

Evans, meanwhile, wrote seven other books. And, The Christmas Box has gone on to inspire groups across the country to erect angel statues (one figures in the story) as gathering places for people who have lost children.

"It is interesting," says the 39-year-old author, "the effect of the book has eclipsed the book itself."

"The Christmas Box changed the Christmas book market," says Sarah Launius, a marketing manager for five Baltimore-area Borders Books and Music stores.

The appeal to national publishers is evident.

In addition to Grisham and the Clarks, Jan Karon has added to her best-selling Mitford Years series with The Mitford Snowmen, a 23-page tale of a small-town snowman-building contest. Former president Jimmy Carter's new memoir, Christmas in Plains, is also in a gift-book format. Other books, published by mainstream and independent presses, share Christmas memories, fables or religious tales that range from inspiring to sappy, often with a holiday lesson for the reader.

Evans, who calls the wave of holiday books that followed his flattering, is back, too, with The Christmas Box Miracle, a memoir recounting the path he took to publish the original. The short volume includes the role divine inspiration played in his success.

"I have come to believe there is a direction to our lives," says Evans. "I had to share some of those experiences."

Not easily discouraged

John Snyder started working on The Golden Ring before Evans became a phenomenon, but he began his writing career much the same way. The 49-year-old found a niche with his book last year, selling more than 24,000 copies of a self-published hardcover edition.

"It is very, very rare to get that kind of response," says John Aherne, an editor at Warner Books.

Most independent publishers are lucky to sell 1,000 copies total. Snyder's sales helped get Aherne's attention after a colleague gave him the book. "I was really touched by the story," he says.

Warner bought the rights and released The Golden Ring nationally this year. The publisher plans to advertise in People magazine and The New York Times, as well as distribute 60,000 copies of the book. But Snyder isn't leaving his success in the publisher' hands. The Golden Ring may be the first book he has written, but it is not the first product he's sold. His public relations firm promoted Hardee's restaurants, The Washington Capitals and the old Washington Bullets among others.

"It's got cross-generational appeal ... it's a good family story. I think people are looking for that now," says Snyder.

Before The Golden Ring, Snyder had only written short stories and poems for his family. He was visiting his grandmother in Western Maryland when she told him about a memorable Christmas. The story stuck with him, and he decided to write it down.

He spent several years developing the story, seeking help from an editor and a proofreader, and elaborating on his ideas until he had a fictional piece based on the original tale.

Snyder sent it to publishers and says, "Like every other aspiring author, I got totally rejected by everybody."

But he wasn't easily discouraged. He received good feedback from friends and family, so he published the book himself in 1999, giving one of the first copies to his grandmother just days before she died.

Snyder placed it in a few area bookstores, and the reactions were positive. Then, he decided to get serious. He mortgaged his house, printed 32,000 copies and got a national distributor.

"I believed in my story," says Snyder, who grew up in Cumberland. "I felt I really had something."

And he found others did, as well. He talks about a couple who drove two hours to a book signing in Frederick, a woman who wrote to him about how much the book meant to her after her mother's death, and patrons who waited in line for 90 minutes to have him autograph their book.

"There is nothing more gratifying than having people tell you that what you wrote touched them," he says.

Snyder spent 18-hour days working on getting his books into stores, setting up and attending signings - 93 between October and December 2000 - and contacting media outlets, including landing interviews with ABC Radio network and Family Circle magazine.

It was time away from his wife, Ruth Ellen, and daughters Nikki, 22, and Carli, 10. But they understood. "If you don't take a chance, you'll never know," says his wife. "John has such conviction, and he's such a hard worker."

This year, even with a large publisher's support, Snyder can't sit back and watch the sales roll in. He's back on the signing circuit, with more than 50 appearances scheduled from Pittsburgh to Annapolis.  It's what authors do who aren't household names.

"You have to develop a following; you have to prove your product sells; and you need a heck of a lot of luck along the way," says Snyder.

His luck is holding out. Warner is considering two more of his books: another Christmas story and a non-holiday novel.