
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ari Fliakos
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By:
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Robin Sloan
About this listen
A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life - mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone - and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.
With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the 21st century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that’s rare to the world of literary fiction. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious listener, no matter the time of day.
©2012 Robin Sloan (P)2012 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.
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It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
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The Wrong Unit
- A Novel
- By: Rob Dircks
- Narrated by: Rob Dircks
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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I don't know what the humans are so cranky about. Their enclosures are large, they ingest over 1,000 calories per day, and they're allowed to mate. Plus, they have me: an Autonomous Servile Unit, housed in a mobile/bipedal chassis. I do my job well: keep the humans healthy and happy.
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Futuristic journey without a single misstep
- By Julie W. Capell on 10-03-16
By: Rob Dircks
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The Invisible Library
- The Invisible Library, Book 1
- By: Genevieve Cogman
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book. Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.
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Female character harassed and *apologizes* for it
- By Rebecca Myers on 06-05-21
By: Genevieve Cogman
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The Pale Dreamer
- A Bone Season Novella
- By: Samantha Shannon
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A dreamer is born - the exhilarating prequel to the ground-breaking, extraordinary Bone Season series. In the perilous heart of Scion London, a dangerous and valuable poltergeist is on the loose - and it must be caught before chaos erupts on the streets of the capital. Here, the clairvoyant underworld plays by its own rules, and rival gangs will stop at nothing to win such a magnificent prize. Sixteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working for Jaxon Hall, the most notorious mime-lord in the city. He thinks she is hiding a powerful gift.
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A great novella
- By Sabrina Williams on 05-01-21
By: Samantha Shannon
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The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
- By: Abbi Waxman
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster!
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Engaging story but not well written
- By Rachel A. on 08-16-19
By: Abbi Waxman
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Matterhorn
- A Novel of the Vietnam War
- By: Karl Marlantes
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 21 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Why we think it’s a great listen: A performance so poignant, we gave Bronson Pinchot (yes, Balki from Perfect Strangers) our inaugural Narrator of the Year award.... In the monsoon season of 1968-69 at a fire support base called Matterhorn, located in the remote mountains of Vietnam, a young and ambitious Marine lieutenant wants to command a company to further his civilian political ambitions. But two people stand in his way.
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A First For Me . . . And The Last
- By Glen on 05-24-10
By: Karl Marlantes
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Bridge to Bat City
- By: Ernest Cline
- Narrated by: Felicia Day
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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After losing her mother, thirteen-year-old Opal moves in with her uncle Roscoe on the family farm. There, Opal bonds with Uncle Roscoe over music and befriends a group of orphaned, music-loving bats. But just as the farm is starting to feel like home, the bats’ cave is destroyed by a big mining company with its sights set on the farmland next.
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not what I expected but it's ok
- By Roger on 04-09-24
By: Ernest Cline
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The Cure for Women
- Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever
- By: Lydia Reeder
- Narrated by: Sara Sheckells
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.
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The Cure for Women
- By Deedra on 06-18-25
By: Lydia Reeder
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
- By: Haruki Murakami
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws listeners into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.
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Highly recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 07-23-18
By: Haruki Murakami
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The Night Circus
- A Novel
- By: Erin Morgenstern
- Narrated by: Jim Dale
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.
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Dreamlike Experience to Savor
- By Suzn F on 09-18-11
By: Erin Morgenstern
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Monk & Robot, Book 1
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Em Grosland
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 07-15-21
By: Becky Chambers
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World War Z: The Complete Edition
- An Oral History of the Zombie War
- By: Max Brooks
- Narrated by: Max Brooks, Alan Alda, John Turturro, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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World War Z: The Complete Edition features 21 additional Hollywood A-list actors and sci-fi fan favorites performing stories not included in the original edition. New narrators include Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, and members of the casts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and more!
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Will never pre-order again
- By Ignatz on 05-18-13
By: Max Brooks
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Beautyland
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she's different: she possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
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Unforgettable
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-24
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Someone You Can Build a Nest In
- By: John Wiswell
- Narrated by: Carmen Rose
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body using a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she's found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warmhearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human
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Weird, but good
- By Kris Rudin on 12-08-24
By: John Wiswell
If you could sum up Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in three words, what would they be?
See my title.What did you like best about this story?
The story never let go of me.What about Ari Fliakos’s performance did you like?
His reading was just delightful. I believe he enjoyed the book as much as I did.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Delight; extreme delight.Any additional comments?
I've read a lot of books in my 64 years. I'm now nearly blind and depend upon audiobooks. This book comes close to making up for the differences between reading a book and listening to a book.I found it very satisfying to listen to this particular reader tell this particular tale. It's an absorbing story that combines old knowledge and new knowledge, books and technology with the interests and the needs of the young and the old.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of my current favorites, and, if it stands up to a few re-readings, it might be a candidate for my list of lifetime favorites
Smart, Quirky and Satisfying
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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Maybe....it was a fun story at first, but about half way through I got very bored. It's definitely a teen lit-type book. If I had that expectation going into it I may have enjoyed it more, but maybe not. It got a bit annoying at times.Should be categorized as teen lit
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Would you consider the audio edition of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore to be better than the print version?
Yes, although I have never read the print version. I loved this book so much due in part to the narrator. The voice and portrayal of the story are amazing and kept me intrigued. Something about the voice made it good to listen to and made me more excited to listen to the book during my drives to and from work.Who was your favorite character and why?
Penumbra. He's mysterious and grandpa-like.Which scene was your favorite?
My favorite scene is when Penumbra realizes that the main character (whose name escapes me at the moment) utilized technology to solve the founder's puzzle. He's a little shocked, but no less impressed by the accomplishment.Any additional comments?
Amazing book. LISTEN TO IT!Best Book I've Listened To So Far
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What did you love best about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore?
This was a magical book, without magic or gimicks, mostly.Who was your favorite character and why?
Clay was telling the story and he was really interesting. I guess I liked him because he was sort of an underachiever. Bright guy, knows he should be doing something, but not sure what. Just like a lot of people.What does Ari Fliakos bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Terrific narrator. differentiated the voices well, got the right age/gender without straining the girl/women voices. And he sounded enthusiastic, as if he was enjoying the story.Any additional comments?
THis is one of those books that escape classification. But really a joy to listen to. I keep wondering about it.What an unexpected surprise...
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Too Technical
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What made the experience of listening to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore the most enjoyable?
Mr. Penumbra himself.What did you like best about this story?
the way backlistWhat does Ari Fliakos bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Adds desperation and he delivers the irony perfectly!If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
when is a bookstore just a bookstore?read it, really!
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Good & Bad Volley
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Lovely surprise
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What made the experience of listening to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore the most enjoyable?
Enjoyable to listen to, but I'm glad I bought this during a sale. It's a fun distraction, but not something I think anyone HAS to read. Great Reader.Fun
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A WILD RIDE!!
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