Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore

A New York Times bestseller, Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore is an entirely charming and lovable first novel of mysterious books and dusty bookshops; it is a witty and delightful love-letter to both the old book world and the new.



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' behaviour 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...

'The pages swell with Mr Sloan's nerdy affection and youthful enthusiasm for both tangible books and new media... [but] the ties that bind the story are friendship and vitality for life. This is a clever and whimsical tale with a big heart' The Economist

Shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award for First Fiction.



Robin Sloan grew up near Detroit and has worked at Poynter, Current TV and Twitter in jobs that have generally had 'something to do with figuring out the future of media'. He has previously published short fiction in Kindle-only editions (

Mr Penumbra started out as a 6000-word ebook). He lives in San Francisco. www.robinsloan.com / @robinsloan



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



It's a proper novel. By which I mean, not that it has pages you actually turn - that is optional with novels nowadays - but pages that you actually want to turn, which is getting rarer and rarer.... Charming, gently comedic, sweetly nerdy and enthusiastic about media both old and new



Rollicking... an ode to the beauty of dead-tree books



Delightful... Smart, hip and witty



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