Download or read book Mr Penumbra s 24 Hour Bookstore written by Robin Sloan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a web-design drone, and serendipity, sheer curiosity and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey have landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than its name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything. Instead they “check 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 has embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behaviour and roped his friends into helping him figure out just what’s going on. But once they take their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the secrets extend far beyond the walls of the bookstore. Evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like—an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave.

Download or read book Sourdough written by Robin Sloan and published by MCD. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it. Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market—and a whole new world opens up.

Download or read book Ajax Penumbra 1969 written by Robin Sloan and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 . . .

Download or read book An Incomplete Education written by Judy Jones and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-07-22 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A completely updated, revised edition of the classic, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Here’s your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be! How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus? What’s the difference between fission and fusion? Whigs and Tories? Shiites and Sunnis? Deduction and induction? Why aren’t all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for? What really happened in Plato’s cave? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous? An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History: Here’s the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair. In this revised edition you’ll find a vitally expanded treatment of international issues, reflecting the seismic geopolitical upheavals of the past decade, from economic free-fall in South America to Central Africa’s world war, and from violent radicalization in the Muslim world to the crucial trade agreements that are defining globalization for the twenty-first century. And don’t forget to read the section "A Nervous American’s Guide to Living and Loving on Five Continents" before you answer a personal ad in the International Herald Tribune. As delightful as it is illuminating, An Incomplete Education packs ten thousand years of culture into a single superbly readable volume. This is a book to celebrate, to share, to give and receive, to pore over and browse through, and to return to again and again.

Download or read book The Manual of Detection written by Jedediah Berry and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this tightly plotted debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams.

Download or read book Brave New Girl written by Rachel Vincent and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Thrilling and dangerous, with an ending that will leave you gasping!” —SUZANNE YOUNG, New York Times bestselling author of the series THE PROGRAM In a world where everyone is the same, one girl is the unthinkable: unique. A high-stakes fast-paced series launch from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent. Dahlia 16 sees her face in every crowd. She’s nothing special—just one of five thousand girls created from a single genome to work for the greater good of the city. Meeting Trigger 17 changes everything. He thinks she’s interesting. Beautiful. Unique. Which means he must be flawed. When Dahlia can’t stop thinking about him she realizes she’s flawed, too. But what if Trigger is right? What if Dahlia is different? But if she’s flawed, then so are all her identicals. And any genome found to be flawed will be destroyed, ONE BY ONE BY ONE. . . . “Captivates.” —VOYA “Thrilling.” —School Library Journal “I loved every second of it.” —The Best Books Ever

Download or read book The Alternative written by Elena Upton and published by . This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Unbreakable Code written by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times-Bestseller! Could books hidden through Book Scavenger be linked to an arsonist's web of destruction? Find out in Book 2 of Jennifer Chambliss' The Book Scavenger series. Mr. Quisling is definitely up to something mysterious, and Emily and James are on high alert. First, there’s the coded note he drops at a book event. Then they uncover a trail of encrypted messages in Mark Twain-penned books hidden through Book Scavenger. What’s most suspicious is that each hidden book triggers a fire. As the sleuthing friends dig deeper, they discover Mr. Quisling has been hunting a legendary historical puzzle: the Unbreakable Code. This new mystery is irresistible, but Emily and James can’t ignore the signs that Mr. Quisling might be the arsonist. The clock is ticking as the fires multiply, and Emily and James race to crack the code of a lifetime. This title has Common Core connections. A Christy Ottaviano Book

Download or read book A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum written by Emma Southon and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and informative look at the unique culture of crime, punishment, and killing in Ancient Rome In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.

Download or read book The Nix written by Nathan Hill and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction A New York Times 2016 Notable Book Entertainment Weekly's #1 Book of the Year A Washington Post 2016 Notable Book A Slate Top Ten Book NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it’s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. . . . Nathan Hill is a maestro.” —John Irving From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago and beyond, The Nix explores—with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness—the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change. It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help. To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.

Download or read book Anthem written by Noah Hawley and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A blistering thriller that follows a group of teenagers on an adventure through an apocalyptic America much like our own.” ―Entertainment Weekly Bestselling author of Before the Fall and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo) returns with a chilling and prophetic allegory of America as it is now and as it could be. It begins with a Song... In a country divided by pandemic, climate change, and incendiary rhetoric, a new plague infects American teens via social media: a contagious new meme spreading chaos and fear. Desperate parents look for something, anything to stop the madness. At the Float Anxiety Abasement Center, in a suburb of Chicago, Simon Oliver is trying to recover from his sister’s tragic passing. He breaks out to join a woman named Louise and a man called the Prophet on a quest as urgent as it is enigmatic. Who lies at the end of the road? A man known as the Wizard, whose past encounter with Louise sparked her own collapse. Their quest becomes a rescue mission as those most in danger race to save one life – and the country’s future. Anthem is rich with unforgettably vivid characters, as fast and bright as pop cinema. Noah Hawley takes readers along for a leap into the idiosyncratic pulse of the American heart, written with the playfulness, biting wit, literary power, and foresight that have made him one of our most essential writers.

Download or read book All I Love and Know written by Judith Frank and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told with the storytelling power and emotional fidelity of Wally Lamb, this is a searing drama of a modern American family on the brink of dissolution, one that explores adoption, gay marriage, and love lost and found. For years, Matthew Greene and Daniel Rosen have enjoyed a quiet domestic life together in Northampton, Massachusetts. Opposites in many ways, they have grown together and made their relationship work. But when they learn that Daniel’s twin brother and sister-in-law have been killed in a bombing in Jerusalem, their lives are suddenly, utterly transformed. In dealing with their families and the need to make a decision about who will raise the deceased couple’s two children, both Matthew and Daniel are confronted with challenges that strike at the very heart of their relationship. What is Matthew’s place in an extended family that does not completely accept him or the commitment he and Daniel have made? How do Daniel’s questions about his identity as a Jewish man affect his life as a gay American? Tensions only intensify when they learn that the deceased parents wanted Matthew and Daniel to adopt the children—six-year-old Gal, and baby Noam. The impact this instant new family has on Matthew, Daniel, and their relationship is subtle and heartbreaking, yet not without glimmers of hope. They must learn to reinvent and redefine their bond in profound, sometimes painful ways. What kind of parents can these two men really be? How does a family become strong enough to stay together and endure? And are there limits to honesty or commitment—or love?

Download or read book The Medinet Habu Records of the Foreign Wars of Ramesses III written by Donald Bruce Redford and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Medinet Habu Records of the Foreign Wars of Ramesses III is a new translation and commentary of the Textual record of Ramesses III’s military activity. As such it dwells heavily upon the inscriptions dealing with Libyans and Sea Peoples. Since the format is oral formulaic, the texts are scanned and rendered as lyric. The new insights into the period covered by the inscriptions leads to a new appraisal of the identity of Egypt’s enemies, as well as events surrounding the activity of the Sea Peoples. The exercise is not intended to dismiss, but rather to complement the archaeological evidence. "The Sea Peoples ... still remain an everexpanding topic of scholarly research swimming in a sea of disputation.... Redford’s book will help all of us to understand better the phenomenon of the end of the Bronze Age." -Anthony Spalinger, University of Auckland, Journal of the American Oriental Society 139.4 (2019)

Download or read book Fed Fit written by Cassy Joy Garcia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fed & Fit offers meal preparation guides and incorporates practical application tools that are centered around the 'Pillars' to ensure complete success and make transitioning to a healthy lifestyle a positive and rewarding experience. Fed & Fit also features expert techniques and fitness recommendations from New York Times Bestselling author and fitness coach Juli Bauer, "--

Download or read book Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore written by Matthew Sullivan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Not for the faint-hearted.' Scotsman What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart? Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel. Why did Joey do it? What did he know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

Download or read book Lady Jane Grey written by Eric Ives and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lady Jane Grey, is one of the most elusive and tragic characters in English history. In July 1553 the death of the childless Edward VI threw the Tudor dynasty into crisis. On Edward's instructions his cousin Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, only to be ousted 13 days later by his illegitimate half sister Mary and later beheaded. In this radical reassessment, Eric Ives rejects traditional portraits of Jane both as hapless victim of political intrigue or Protestant martyr. Instead he presents her as an accomplished young woman with a fierce personal integrity. The result is a compelling dissection by a master historian and storyteller of one of history’s most shocking injustices.

Download or read book Physics Concepts and Connections written by Henri M. Van Bemmel and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: