Staff Pick - Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

What a delightful read!

Do you like puzzles, mysteries, and adventures? Do you enjoy reading about books, bookstores, and quirky book lovers? – then,

Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, is a perfect bookish tale for you. Be prepared: this novel is a blend of mystery, adventure and fantasy where typeface fonts play a major role in the storyline. And, attention, the book cover glows in the dark!

Set in San Francisco, the story starts with Clay Jannon, graphic designer, looking for a job during the recession. He is hired as a night clerk in a mysterious little bookstore (three stories high with no stairs, just ladders) run by Ajax Penumbra. Clay gets the job along with peculiar duties and even more peculiar customers. The bookstore is “the haunt of a secret society that exists to decode an ancient codex by the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius.” I will not unveil the plot but I can tell you that I enjoyed the atmosphere and the themes in the novel: books, secret societies, cryptographs, Google, and the quest.

This quest has a constellation of characters: Clay (a rogue)- young, charming and smart and his eccentric friends: Kat Potente (a wizard) - a genius girl who works at Google specializing on data visualization and her favourite topic of conversation is Singularity, Neel Shah (a warrior) - Clay’s childhood friend and millionaire who created Anatomix, the software that stimulates famous breasts.

If you want to take a break from your problems, read this enjoyable and full of warmth story about quirky people going on a quest and trying to solve an impossible 500-year-old puzzle.

Check Novelist for more books about books and people who love them:

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline