[QUOTE=robot flux]When you say that they scourged his stock, do you mean they actually tried to BUY it from him (see his stock) or that they just tried to look around the store itself? I'm telling you, I've played the game many times with different characters and everytime Joshaba has the
progress of thruth in his stock, waiting to be bought.
The thing is to go EVERY book single-handedly thru, and since he does not have more than one copy, those with a little index number 2 or 3 can be easily disregarded.[/QUOTE]
Both, several times over. I am very thorough generally, and not too quick to scream "I can't find it," because usually through sheer stubborness I can

But in this case it really was not there, I looked extremely closely in both his stock for barter and *all* the books in his shop. It is not a big deal, I am long past the main quest, and my character specialised in stealth, so lifting it in the library was like taking candy from a baby, and given that I was stealing the thing right beneath the ordinator's noses, it was rather fun from a roleplaying perspective
I only mentioned that I could not find it because searches I have done on the subject yield conflicting information, which is why I am wondering if its presence in Jobasha's shop is random or perhaps related to game edition. This is not unusual with games... when I was playing Baldur's Gate One, I heard much talk of a certain ring you were supposed to be able to find. Much as I looked I could not see the thing, later I discovered it had been removed in later versions of the game.