[color:"orange"]I tried that to get books and had no luck.[/color]
I found Kistandalius or (less often) Blake in Ars Magicana and Corinna or (less often) Mpenzak in Verdistis were most likely to have spell books. If you quicksave before running your mouse cursor over them or hitting the alt key nearby, it might take a dozen or 2 (or even 3) quickloads before you see a spellbook for sale. Usually I just checked whenever I went by or was stashing or selling loot, but sometimes reloaded a few times looking for charms or spellbooks.
[color:"orange"]I stole one from arcanna but it did not work so I sold it back for 6000.[/color]
Do you mean when you clicked on it in your inventory nothing happened, or it did not teach you the listed spell?
If the former, I don't think you can learn from a spell book when the game is paused (might be thinking of something else).
There are a couple spell books which can teach different spells, or which teach something slightly different than what is listed (
Which spell).
