No progression sensitivity whatsoever. You can at any time decide to just literally walk the streets for weeks without having a problem. Only caveat is that sometimes you have to wait for the story of character X to reach a certain point until you can progress with character Y.
The mattress IIRC will just improve your tiredness - you need less sleep.
For Veronica: hover over her face bottom left and see what the hint says - and do so
We don't know how advanced you are in the story and what the current task is. The most common problem: If you are blackmailing her into housework, you have to actually look that she does as told, i. e. visit her when she is doing the laundry (or whatever else you told her to do).
I don't remember any specifics about a book, but there are two stores in game (the general store from the introduction/tutorial, and the mall). It probably is found in the mall.
