Book news, reviews, trends, and talk | Shelf Life

Shelf Life Book news, reviews, trends, and talk

See the paperback cover of 'Crazy Rich Asians' by Kevin Kwan -- EXCLUSIVE

By Stephan Lee on Jan 8, 2014 at 3:44PM

What does it mean to be a crazy-rich Asian as opposed to a plain old rich Asian? To find out, just delve into Kevin Kwan’s delicious beach read Crazy Rich Asians. The story explores the social and political hierarchies of three pedigreed Chinese families and the drama that strikes when Nicholas Young brings his American-born Chinese girlfriend home to Singapore for the summer. The bedazzled hardcover was a best-seller last summer and has been optioned for film by the producers of The Hunger Games movies. But if you want next season’s hottest look — as so many of Kwan’s characters do — hold out for the paperback version, exclusively revealed above, in May 2014.

Read an interview with Kwan here.

Laurie Halse Anderson shares her personal connection to PTSD and teenage love in 'The Impossible Knife of Memory'

By Jodi Walker on Jan 7, 2014 at 1:11PM

Laurie Halse Anderson is most well known for her debut YA novel, Speak. Published in 1999, at a time when sexual assault, the focus of the central narrative, was truly beginning to become a part of the social consciousness, Speak is still considered one of the best YA novels of its time, and has even been incorporated into high school curricula all over the country. In the year of Speaks‘s 15th anniversary. Anderson is releasing her fifth, and perhaps most personal, YA novel yet, The Impossible Knife of Memory, which approaches the question many young people encounter when their parents go into active military duty: What happens when they come home?

The Impossible Knife of Memory is in stores now, and Anderson sat down with EW to talk about her own experience with veterans, Secondary PTSD, and finally writing a love story.
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Hear 'Battlestar Galactica' star Jamie Bamber narrate latest 'Bane Chronicles' installment -- EXCLUSIVE

By Breia Brissey on Jan 7, 2014 at 11:00AM

Image Credit: Rebecca Sapp/WireImage

What the frak?! Your YA and sci-fi worlds will collide with today’s audiobook release of The Last Stand of the New York Institute. Battlestar Galactica‘s Jamie Bamber narrates the ninth installment of The Bane Chronicles, written by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson. We’ve got an exclusive excerpt showcasing Bamber’s oratory skills. But first, listen to this interview with the actor about the book. Check it out after the jump. READ FULL STORY

See the trailer for Tonya Hurley's 'Passionaries' -- EXCLUSIVE

By Breia Brissey on Jan 7, 2014 at 10:00AM

Passionaries, the second book in Tonya Hurley’s Blessed series hits shelves today. In honor of the novel’s release, we’ve got an exclusive look at the trailer! Here’s the official description, then check out the video after the jump. “In Precious Blood, Agnes, Cecelia, and Lucy watched as Sebastian sacrificed himself for what he believed in, and now they have choices to make of their own. Will the girls trust in their destinies as saints and martyrs and perform the miracles as Sebastian instructed? Or will they lose faith in themselves and each other in his absence? Time is running out for them to make a decision, and the fate of the world lies in the balance.” READ FULL STORY

'On Such a Full Sea' debuts as the first-ever 3D book cover

By Andrea Towers on Jan 7, 2014 at 9:35AM

3D movies. 3D televisions. 3D…books?

Yep, you read that right. Riverhead Books has released what they’re dubbing “the first-ever 3D printed slipcover” for Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea. Hitting the market at a cool $150, the title will be available as a limited-edition white slipcover, which shows the words rising off the edges – just as if you were to look at the book through a pair of 3D glasses.

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Kate Atkinson's 'Life After Life' wins U.K.'s Costa Book Award

By Associated Press on Jan 6, 2014 at 3:16PM

British writer Kate Atkinson has won the novel-of-the-year prize at Britain’s Costa Book Awards with her reality-altering historical saga Life After Life.

Other winners in the event’s five categories include poet Michael Symmons Roberts for his collection Drysalter and mental health nurse Nathan Filer, who takes the first-novel prize for his saga of madness, The Shock of the Fall.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett won the biography category for her portrait of an Italian Fascist, The Pike, while author and illustrator Chris Riddell won the children’s book prize for Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse.

One of the five books named Monday will be chosen as the overall winner and awarded 30,000 pounds ($50,000) at a Jan. 28 ceremony. The awards are open to writers based in Britain and Ireland.

Elizabeth Jane Howard, author of 'Cazalet Chronicles,' dies

By Associated Press on Jan 3, 2014 at 9:36AM

Image Credit: Michael Fresco/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty

Elizabeth Jane Howard, whose saga of a wealthy English family living in the shadow of war enchanted readers a generation ahead of Downton Abbey, died Thursday, her friend and publicist said. She was 90.

Jacqui Graham said that Howard died Thursday at her home in Bungay, England. No details as to the cause of death were immediately available.

Howard’s whirlwind life saw her write 15 novels, leave three marriages, model, act, broadcast, and much more. Many of her books were critical successes, but she was best known for The Cazalet Chronicles, which followed the tangled lives and loves of several generations of an aristocratic household in the run-up to World War II. READ FULL STORY

'The Ring and the Crown': See the cover for Melissa de la Cruz's newest novel -- EXCLUSIVE

By Breia Brissey on Dec 24, 2013 at 10:30AM

‘Twas the day before Christmas, so Shelf Life has decided to give you the greatest present of all: an exclusive cover reveal! How gorgeous is the cover for Melissa de la Cruz’s newest novel, The Ring and the Crown? The book doesn’t hit shelves until April 1, but judging by the cover—which I realize is not what I’m supposed to do—Crown looks really promising. READ FULL STORY

'It's Kind of a Funny Story' author Ned Vizzini dies at 32

By Hillary Busis on Dec 20, 2013 at 1:43PM

Image Credit: Sabra Embury

Ned Vizzini, the author of YA favorites It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Be More Chill, died Thursday in New York City. According to the Los Angeles Times, Vizzini committed suicide. He was 32.

Vizzini, a Brooklyn native, began writing professionally for New York City newspapers as a teenager in the late ’90s. His first book, a “quasi-autogiobraphy” called Teen Angst? Naaah…, collected several of Vizzini’s columns for the New York Press and shared its title with an essay Vizzini had published in the New York Times Magazine when he was still a junior at Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School. The book hit shelves in 2000. His first novel, Be More Chill, was published in 2004.

That same year, Vizzini experienced depression and suicidal thoughts, which prompted him to call a suicide hotline. Vizzini subsequently spent a week in the psychiatric ward of Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital. Vizzini would later fictionalize this experience in his acclaimed second novel, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, published in 2006. The novel was adapted into a film starring Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, and Emma Roberts in 2010.
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