Robin Sloan

After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret. 75,000 first printing.

A Novel

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

"A new novel about an underground food community by the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore"--

Sourdough

From Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, the story of Mr. Penumbra's first trip to San Francisco—and of how he got entangled with the city's most unusual always-open enterprise... It is August 1969. The Summer of Love is a fading memory. The streets of San Francisco pulse to the sounds of Led Zeppelin and Marvin Gaye. And of jackhammers: A futuristic pyramid of a skyscraper is rising a few blocks from City Lights bookstore and an unprecedented subway tunnel is being built under the bay. Meanwhile, south of the city, orchards are quickly giving way to a brand-new industry built on silicon. But young Ajax Penumbra has not arrived in San Francisco looking for free love or a glimpse of the technological future. He is seeking a book—the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. The last record of the book locates it in the San Francisco of more than a century earlier, and on that scant bit of evidence, Penumbra's university has dispatched him west to acquire it for their library. After a few weeks of rigorous hunting, Penumbra feels no closer to his goal than when he started. But late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles across a 24-hour bookstore, and the possibilities before him expand exponentially . . .

Ajax Penumbra 1969

Moonbound

Annabel Scheme

At last, the story that definitively bridges the world of Sourdough to that of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s all one Penumbraverse. James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling. The future is being built an hour or two down the highway—it’s 1985; the twenty-first century is just around the corner!—but that’s not his world either. While sitting in a Sonoma County bar, indulging in a little aimless day drinking with a junior college acquaintance, he meets a man. A man with . . . something like a plan. Has James ever heard of a “suitcase clone”? It’s a cutting of a vine used to clone and propagate noteworthy grapes—say, from a legendary European vineyard to an upstart Napa Valley operation. This man has an operation. He has a suitcase. He just needs an enterprising young accomplice up for an adventure. Just how deliriously fun and thrillingly mind-expanding an adventure, James can’t yet know. But we, of course, know how Robin Sloan crafts a story. Crossing the international literary-techno-conspiracy of Mr. Penumbra with the delicious experimentation of Sourdough, The Suitcase Clone is a tale that enriches and expands the Penumbraverse in ways you never saw coming, told by a mysterious narrator with an unexpected perspective on the great puzzles of life. Who could it be?

The Suitcase Clone

Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate

The Writer and the Witch

In the Stacks

"A recessão econômica obriga Clay Jannon, um web-designer desempregado, a aceitar trabalho em uma livraria 24 horas. A livraria do Mr. Penumbra - um homenzinho estranho com cara de gnomo. Tão singular quanto seu proprietário é a livraria onde só um pequeno grupo de clientes aparece. E sempre que aparece é para se enfurnar, junto do proprietário, nos cantos mais obscuros da loja, e apreciar um misterioso conjunto de livros a que Clay Jannon foi proibido de ler. Mas Jannon é curioso... Michael Schaub, crítico de livros da NPR, disse antes do lançamento nos EUA que "Mr. Penumbra" seria uma das experiências de leitura mais divertidas que provavelmente teria no ano passado. Jonathan H. Liu, da GeekDad, disse: "Fantástico... Eu adorei mergulhar no mundo que Sloan criou, tanto a fantasia de alta tecnologia do Google como da sociedade analógica". O Jornalista Zeca Camargo recomendou a leitura em seu blog, confira o trecho: "Trata-se de uma aventura apaixonada sobre livros – sobre o passado e o futuro deles, ambos os tempos convivendo (não exatamente em harmonia) na livraria do senhor Penumbra. Os personagens que desfilam pela loja desafiam qualquer noção de realidade – e embora alguns trechos tenham toques de ficção científica, há um delicioso balanço entre a fantasia e o nosso cotidiano tão informatizado. Recomendo-o".

A Livraria 24 horas do Mr. Penumbra

The Sleep Consultant

Computerdeskundigen zoeken in boeken met geheimschrift naar kennis voor het digitale tijdperk.

boekwinkel; 24 uur open

Het geheim van penumbra's / druk 1

Il magico pane dei fratelli Mazg

DA ROBIN SLOAN, AUTORE DI IL SEGRETO DELLA LIBRERIA SEMPRE APERTA, LA STORIA DEL PRIMO VIAGGIO A SAN FRANCISCO DEL LIBRAIO PIÙ ECCENTRICO DI TUTTI I TEMPI, AJAX PENUMBRA E DEL SUO «COLPO DI FULMINE» CON IL NEGOZIO PIÙ INCREDIBILE DI TUTTA LA CITTÀ... Agosto 1969: le strade di San Francisco risuonano della musica dei Led Zeppelin e Marvin Gaye. E dei martelli pneumatici: un futuristico grattacielo a piramide sta prendendo forma pochi isolati dopo la libreria City Lights e un tunnel sotterraneo viene scavato nella baia. Intanto, a sud della città i frutteti cedono il posto a complessi industriali basati sul silicone. Ma il giovane Ajax Penumbra non è arrivato a San Francisco per ascoltare i Led Zeppelin o per restare abbagliato dalla nuova era tecnologica che si sta aprendo. Sta cercando un libro, l’unica copia residua del «Techne Tycheon», un misterioso volume che ha fatto la fortuna e la rovina di chi ha avuto la ventura di possederlo. L’ultima notizia risale a cent’anni prima, quando il prezioso libro era stato avvistato proprio a San Francisco, dove, con poche possibilità di successo, Ajax Penumbra viene inviato dalla sua università con la missione di rintracciare e acquistare il volume per la biblioteca dell’università. Dopo settimane di ricerche indefesse, Penumbra non ha fatto il minimo progresso, fino a quando, una notte, non incappa nella Libreria sempre aperta. E qui un mondo intero gli si spalanca davanti...

Robin Sloan

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