Farewell to Sidney Sheldon

Novelist, screenwriter, and playwright Sidney Sheldon died Tuesday afternoon at the age of 89 from complications from pneumonia. Over the course of his long career, Sheldon wrote 200 television scripts, twenty-five major motion pictures, six Broadway plays, and eighteen novels. Sheldon began his career at the age of 17 as a reader at Universal Studios and then joined the Air Force during World War II. After the war, he traveled to New York and wrote the Broadway musicals Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music before winning an Academy Award in 1948 for his screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Sheldon also wrote scripts for The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, and Hart to Hart.

Sheldon’s career as a novelist began in 1970 with the mystery novel, The Naked Face, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best first mystery novel of the year. Although not universally lauded by critics, Sheldon has always entertained his readers. In an interview with Paul Rosenfield of the Los Angeles Times, Sheldon states, “"I have this goal. And it's for a reader to not be able to go to sleep at night. I want him to keep reading another four pages, then one more page. The following morning, or night, he's anxious to get back to the book." His books have been published in 180 countries and translated into fifty-one languages. His memoir The Other Side of Me was published in 2005. Please visit the online catalog to check the availability of all Sheldon’s titles or to place a hold.