Lizzie Skurnick Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Alias Books

Publication Order of Alias Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lizzie Skurnick is a young adult and teen fiction author best known for her novels and essays on teen fiction. Her best-known work is “Shelf Discovery” a creative work praising the young adult novels of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Her works on culture and literature has been featured in the “LA Times,” the “New York Times Book Review,” “Politics Daily,” “Time,” the “Daily Beast,” “Bookforum,” “O,” “NPR,” “The Awl,” and “Jezebel” among many other publications and outlets. Skurnick has at one time served in the Board of The National Book Critics Circle, earned fellowships and residencies from the AWP, Yaddo, Ucross, and the VCCA. She is also a frequent speaker on the intersection between online and print literature on AWP, SXSW, and BEA and has also spoken on young adult literature. She currently edits one of the first literary blogs on the internet titled “Old Hag” that has won Best of the Web Pick Award by “Forbes.” Her best work is the collection of essays that she had fun reading as a youth in the novel “Shelf Discovery.” Working for the “New York Times” she wrote a compendium of words in the novel titled “That Should Be a Word,” which was the title of a column she wrote for the paper. She has also written several novels in the “Love Stories,” “Sweet Valley University” series, and prequels to the “Alias” TV series. She has been a professor of creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and New York University. She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Since Skurnick was interested in publishing out of print books she started her own publishing company Lizzie Skurnick Book under Ig Publishing. She never did set out to bring her favorite teenage novels back into print as she naively thought someone else would do it. At this time, she was working for “Jezebel” and began posting old book covers to her followers. This sparked conversations about out of print novels and the authors that had been all but forgotten. She got the attention of Ig Publishing which is a company that reprints overlooked political and fiction works. They wanted her to be the spearhead of a reprinting campaign for young adult novels that people had loved growing up. Several big-name children authors such as Judy Blume and Lois Duncan were interested and they wrote several forewords for the new editions. “Debutante Hill” by Lois Duncan that was first published in 1958 was the first novel to be reprinted under Lizzie Skurnick Books in 2013. The venture and book received a lot of unbridled excitement from fans of the novels who were now in their 30s and 40s and from publishing circles. The imprint even has a subscription model so that persons who do not want to miss any reprints can get their novels whenever they come out.

Right from when Lizzie Skurnick started the project, she insisted that the novels were more than nostalgia, as she believed these books still have a lot to say to modern teens and tweens. Sh has said that the lack of young adult and children’s literature in the publishing industry has become glaring. While there are books targeted at these groups, for the most part, there is a lack of diversity. Skurnick intends to deal with these issues by allowing minorities to publish their books, even as she seeks to republish the old young adult books her generation loved so much. Brenda Wilkinson’s “Ludell,” a series of novels by the black author was first published in 1975 was recently reprinted. The imprint has also published “Harriet the Spy” by Louise Fitzhugh and tells a young adult story from the point of a black teen. Skurnick believes that there is no right time for a novel as books written hundreds of years ago can still have meaning for modern-day teens.

While writing for “Jezebel,” Lizzie Skurnick set out to read some of the best young adult novels she had read as a teen. She began writing the experience in her weekly column titled “Fine Lines.” The series became a huge hit as many women relived memories of their teenage favorites. After her column got so much traction, she decided to turn the articles into a book titled “Shelf Discovery.” Reading the novel feels like reminiscing about teenage adventures at a high school reunion narrated by a very good storyteller. Skurnick writes in an insightful, conversational, and witty way as she writes summaries for the likes of “Little Women,” “The Little Princess,” “Bridge to Terebithia,” and “Flowers in the Attic.” Her summaries are supplemented by guest essays from the likes of Cecily Von Ziegesar, Tayari Jones, and Jennifer Weiner. The collection reminisces about the literature many women read and helps them to understand their young adult lives while also infusing some humor in the essays. From how a pig bladder can make a great toy in the novel “Little House in the Big Woods” to “Stranger with My Face” that says you should never trust your long lost twin.

“That Should be a Word” by Lizzie Skurnick is a great novel that tries to explain our obsession with new digital words. Following her highly successful compilation of young adult novels from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, she does the same with words from the digital age. Just like her “Jezebel” series, this is a compilation from her New York Times Magazine column “That Should Be a Word.” Lizzie delights with clever neologisms that provide razor-sharp social commentary. The work combines 244 clever wordplays with the majority of these detailing ingenious interrelationships in a diagram format. The novel comes complete with illustrations, definitions, usage examples, and pronunciations. It comes with words that deal with human obsession with food such as the word that says that another cannot be hungry – Carbiter; Twiticule which means to mock another in 140 characters or less. Using modern family words such as spamily that has the meaning of posting incessantly about children or family on social media; brattle which means talking about one’s children nonstop. Some words describe the anxiety that most people in a post-recession society have to deal with in the word bangst; to celebracy which mocks the hyper vain celebrity who despises anything and everything. The work delves into the maddening and humorous aspects of contemporary life.

Before Lizzie Skurnick became an author writing popular columns and bringing to life old and forgotten young adult literature, she was writing fiction. “Shadowed” is the twelfth prequel of the “Alias” TV series. At the beginning of the novel, Sydney the lead in the novel is a UCLA sophomore and is thrilled that she gets to have a larger and newer dorm room to share with her friend Francie. But Sydney is soon distracted by a new guy named Brennan, even as Francie is thinking about how to redecorate their room. Brennan is sending mixed signals and Sydney does not know whether she should stick with her current boyfriend Noah or pursue the new guy. Everything takes a back seat when she is called up by SD-6 to go on a mission to Germany alongside Noah and Lucy a new agent. They are to retrieve World War II era notes from a Russian military innovator that had been lost years ago. It is a dangerous mission but is nothing when compared to what is awaiting her when she goes back home to the US. These are thrilling novels that create a new world while remaining faithful to the series on which they are based.