Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore - Tapa dura

One afternoon in 2001, while she was recovering from treatments for breast cancer, Shea got a call from a friend who was looking for help at her family's bookstore. Janet Edwards expected no more than help spreading the word, so she was surprised when Shea offered to take the job herself, seeing it as a way to get out of her pajamas and back into the world. But over the next twelve months, Shea unintentionally realized a dream that so many book lovers harbor: She became a bookseller. From St. Patrick's Day - for which she arranged her first window display - through National Poetry Month, Mother's Day and Father's Day, the all-important summer reading season, the crucial Chanukah and Christmas gift rush, then back again to piling up stacks of Joyce and maps of Dublin, Shea lived and breathed books in a place she believes sells "ideas, stores, encouragement, answers, solace, validation, the basic ammunition for daily life."

Suzanne Strempek Shea, winner of the 2000 New England Book Award for Fiction, is the author of five novels, Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, Around Again, and Becoming Finola, and the three memoirs Songs from a Lead-Lined Room, Shelf Life, and Sundays in America. She lives in Bondsville, Massachusetts, and sells books at Edwards Books in Springfield, Massachusetts.