Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Book Store

Suzanne Shea has always loved a good book-and she's written five of them, all acclaimed. In the course of her ten-year career, she's done a good bit of touring, including readings and drop-ins at literally hundreds of bookstores. She never visited one that wasn't memorable.

Two years ago, while recovering from radiation therapy, Shea heard from a friend who was looking for help at her bookstore. Shea volunteered, seeing it as nothing more than a way to get out of her pajamas and back into the world. But over next twelve months, from St. Patrick's Day through Poetry Month, graduation/Father's Day/summer reading/Christmas and back again to those shamrock displays, Shea lived and breathed books in a place she says sells'ideas, stories, encouragement, answers, solace, validation, the basic ammunition for daily life.' Her work was briefly interrupted by an author tour that took her to other great bookstores. Descriptions of these and her memories of book-lined rooms reaching all the way back to childhood visits to the Bookmobile are scattered throughout this charming, humorous, and engrossing account of reading and rejuvenation.

For anyone who loves books, and especially for anyone who has fallen under the spell of a special bookstore, Shelf Life will be required reading.


About the Author
Suzanne Strempek Shea, winner of the 2000 New England Book Award for Fiction, is the author of four novels, Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, and Around Again, and the memoir Songs from a Lead-Lined Room: Notes-High and Low-from My Journey through Breast Cancer and Radiation. She lives in Bondsville, Massachusetts, and sells books at Edwards Books in Springfield, Massachusetts.