  Shell stars, in particular the cooler ones, often do not show conspicuous
Balmer-line emission and may consequently be missed in surveys that
specifically search for emission signatures in the Halpha line. The present
work is aimed at identifying stars with shell-signatures via a search for
strong FeII multiplet 42 lines at 4924, 5018, 5169A in archival LAMOST spectra.
Candidates were selected by probing the FeII 42 lines in the spectra of a
sample of colour-preselected early-type stars using a modified version of the
MKCLASS code and then categorised by visual inspection of their spectra. We
identified 75 stars showing conspicuous shell features, 43 Am/CP1 stars, 12
Ap/CP2 stars, and three objects with composite spectra. Spectral types and
equivalent width measurements of the FeII 42 lines are presented for the sample
of shell stars. Except for three objects, all shell stars appear significantly
removed from the ZAMS in the colour-magnitude diagram, which is likely due to
extinction by circumstellar material. We find a correlation between the
equivalent width of the 5169A line and the distance to the locus of the
main-sequence stars (the larger the IR-excess, the stronger the 5169A line) and
studied the variability of the shell star sample using TESS data, identifying a
very high proportion of double stars. All but 14 shell stars are new
discoveries, which highlights the efficiency of the here presented novel
approach to identify stars with subtle shell features. This study may be used
as a blueprint for discovering these objects in massive spectral databases.
