Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone – and serendipity, coupled with sheer curiosity, has landed him a new job working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

But after just a few days, 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 they simply borrow 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.

“Clever and whimsical tale.”

— The Economist

Review by 1000 Libraries

In Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sloan masterfully captures the intersection of two seemingly disparate worlds: the dusty, towering shelves of a San Francisco bookstore and the high-speed data processing of modern technology. The story follows Clay Jannon, a laid-off web designer who finds himself working the graveyard shift at Penumbra’s, a shop where the “customers” don’t buy books but instead, they decode them.

What makes this book essential reading is its refusal to choose a side in the war between “old” and “new.” Sloan suggests that we don’t have to choose between the physical scent of a first edition and the sleek efficiency of a search algorithm. Instead, he highlights the serendipity that exists in both.

“The right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

The story seeks to acknowledge the cosmic timing that every true reader has experienced; that moment when a book falls off a shelf and into your hands just as you were looking for an answer you hadn’t yet learned how to phrase. Sloan argues that books are not just static objects. Like keys, some unlock ancient conspiracies, while others unlock parts of our own identity.

To read Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is to rediscover the joy of the puzzle. It encourages us to look closer at the things we take for granted and to remember that there is still magic to be found in the shadows of the shelves as well as in the glow of the screen.

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“The story is gripping, the characters are terrific and the writing is clever and funny. As intelligent as it is enjoyable.”

Daily Mail

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“The pages swell with Mr Sloan's nerdy affection and youthful enthusiasm for both tangible books and new media... A clever and whimsical tale with a big heart.”

The Economist

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“Charming, gently comedic, sweetly nerdy and enthusiastic about media both old and new.”

Irish Times

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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore