Shelf Life

If you've ever fantasized about working in a bookstore, 'Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore,' by Suzanne Strempek Shea (Beacon, $20), is the book for you. Shea, who is recovering from breast cancer, is having trouble getting a new book under way, so when a friend calls and asks her for help in finding a new bookstore employee, Shea offers herself as a job candidate.

The author of five novels, Shea begins to experience literary life from the other side of the counter. She describes the struggles of her store, a family bookstore called Edwards Books in Springfield, Mass.; the changing seasons; the eccentric and wonderful staff. She learns about never judging customers, about instant books (in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks), about how to pack cards properly. Readers will wonder if the airline pilot, a customer in search of a book about rekindling love, was successful; will laugh at the false teeth in a bag behind the counter, awaiting return to their proper owner; will rejoice in Shea's return to life and health and energy.

"Get thee to a bookstore," is her mantra, and it is a good one. "You never know what you'll find in there," she writes. "Maybe a copy, as well as the feeling, of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being.' Or as one shopper called that book, 'Lightheadedness.' "

You will want to rush out to a bookstore when you finish "Shelf Life." But you may not be in search of a book; you may want a job instead.