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 Ajax Penumbra 1969 written by Robin Sloan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 65 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 The Ghosts of Thorwald Place written by Helen Power and published by CamCat Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Mystery Scene Magazine 2021 Editor's Pick Trust No One. Especially Your Neighbors. Rachel Drake is on the run from the man who killed her husband. She never leaves her safe haven in an anonymous doorman building, until one night a phone call sends her running. On her way to the garage, she is murdered in the elevator. But her story doesn’t end there. She finds herself in the afterlife, tethered to her death spot, her reach tied to the adjacent apartments. As she rides the elevator up and down, the lives of the residents intertwine. Every one of them has a dark secret. An aging trophy wife whose husband strays. A surgeon guarding a locked room. A TV medium who may be a fraud. An ordinary man with a mysterious hobby. Compelled to spend eternity observing her neighbors, she realizes that any one of them could be her killer.
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 The Silver Witch written by Paula Brackston and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving to a secluded Welsh cottage a year after her husband's sudden death, a ceramic artist begins manifesting powers similar to those of a legendary Celtic witch who issued a prophecy about ancient magic and a heartbreaking disaster.
Download or read book Just My Type written by Simon Garfield and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers ... and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about. As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is 'a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.' This edition is available with both black and silver covers.
Download or read book Ms Ice Sandwich written by Mieko Kawakami and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A witty, moving story of adolescent love and loss from the acclaimed, prize-winning author of Breasts and Eggs “Haruki Murakami listed Kawakami as his favourite young writer, so you're going to want to snatch up this lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches” — Bustle In her English language debut, “ceaselessly growing and evolving”novelist Mieko Kawakami renders an adolsecent voice with laser precision (Haruki Murakami). “Ms Ice Sandwich” is a name I made up, of course. I thought of it the minute I first saw her. Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer. A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. But the complexities of life keep getting in the way – his beloved grandmother's illness is only getting worse, and his mother seems to be totally ignoring it. There’s also his faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti. As she invites him to join her in thrilling games and fantasy, the boy begins to enter a whole new world of imagination. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.
Download or read book Stringers written by Chris Panatier and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A genius is abducted by an alien bounty-hunter for the location of a powerful inter-dimensional object. Trouble is, he can’t remember a thing. Ben isn’t exactly a genius, but he has an immense breadth of knowledge. Whether it’s natural science (specifically the intricacies of bug sex), or vintage timepieces, he can spout facts and information with the best of experts. He just can’t explain why he knows any of it. Another thing he knows is the location of the Chime. What it is or why it’s important, he can’t say. But this knowledge is about to get him in a whole heap of trouble, as a trash-talking, flesh construct bounty hunter is on his tail and looking to sell him to the highest bidder. And being able to describe the mating habits of Brazilian bark lice won't be enough to get him out of it. File Under: Science Fiction [ Bloom of God | Patton you on the back | Eels Aplenty | Some Aliens Just Suck ]
Download or read book A Working Theory of Love written by Scott Hutchins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary debut novel that “hits that sweet spot where humor and melancholy comfortably coexist” (Entertainment Weekly) Before his brief marriage imploded, Neill Bassett took a job feeding data into what could be the world’s first sentient computer. Only his attempt to give it language—through the journals his father left behind after committing suicide—has unexpected consequences. Amidst this turmoil, Neill meets Rachel, a naïve young woman escaping a troubled past, and finds himself unexpectedly drawn to her and the possibilities she holds. But as everything he thought about the past becomes uncertain, every move forward feels impossible.
Download or read book The Brief History of the Dead written by Kevin Brockmeier and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-02-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.
Download or read book Quiet Neighbours written by Catriona McPherson and published by Severn House Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A woman on the run uncovers a series of deadly secrets in this gripping, twisty standalone psychological thriller from award-winning master storyteller Catriona McPherson. Lowland Glen is the oldest bookshop in a quiet Scottish town full of bookshops; rambling and disordered, full of hidden treasures. Londoner Jude fell in love with it when she visited last summer, the high point of a miserable holiday. Now, in the depths of winter, it seems a strange place to run away to - but Jude's tired and heartsick, and when the bookstore's charming but eccentric owner, Lowell, welcomes her with open arms, she knows she's made the right decision. Lowell needs an assistant, and the job comes with accommodation too. The isolated gravedigger's cottage isn't perfect for a woman alone, but it's a good place to hide from her troubles - and at least she has quiet neighbors. Quiet, but not silent. The long dead and the books they left behind have tales to tell, and the dusty bookshop is not the haven it seems. Lowell's past and Jude's present are a dangerous cocktail of secrets and lies - and someone is coming to light the taper that could burn everything down around them . . .
Download or read book Sixpence House written by Paul Collins and published by Bloomsbury Press. This book was released on 2003-04-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sixpence House is an engaging meditation on what books mean to us, and how their meaning can resonate long after they have been abandoned by their public."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Mr Penumbra s 24 Hour Bookstore written by Robin Sloan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.
Download or read book Reading Group Choices written by Reading Group Choices and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Twenty one Truths About Love written by Matthew Dicks and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beloved author of Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend comes a wonderful new novel about a struggling man, written entirely in lists. Daniel Mayrock's life is at a crossroads. He knows the following to be true: 1. He loves his wife Jill... more than anything. 2. He only regrets quitting his job and opening a bookshop a little (maybe more than a little) 3. Jill is ready to have a baby. 4. The bookshop isn’t doing well. Financial crisis is imminent. Dan doesn't know how to fix it. 5. Dan hasn’t told Jill about their financial trouble. 6. Then Jill gets pregnant. This heartfelt story is about the lengths one man will go to and the risks he will take to save his family. But Dan doesn’t just want to save his failing bookstore and his family’s finances: 1. Dan wants to do something special. 2. He’s a man who is tired of feeling ordinary. 3. He’s sick of feeling like a failure. 4. He doesn't want to live in the shadow of his wife’s deceased first husband. Dan is also an obsessive list maker; his story unfolds entirely in his lists, which are brimming with Dan’s hilarious sense of humor, unique world-view, and deeply personal thoughts. When read in full, his lists paint a picture of a man struggling to be a man, a man who has reached a point where he’s willing to do anything for the love (and soon-to-be new love) of his life.
Download or read book Our Place in Nature written by Zachary Seager and published by Collector's Library. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the natural world increasingly under threat, this anthology explores one of the most topical issues of our day; our appreciation of nature and recognition of our place in it. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited and introduced by Zachary Seager. Here is some of the most enduring writing about conservation and the preservation of nature - both animals and plants - together with memorable prose and poetry on respecting the natural environment and the importance of guarding nature from harm. For centuries, writers have been inspired by the natural world; Dorothy Wordsworth gives a lovely account of wildlife and countryside in the Lake District, Robert Louis Stevenson describes a night under the stars which is far more entertaining than sleeping indoors and Susan Fenimore Cooper shares her observations on birds and insects. John Muir and Rachel Carson are amongst many others who remind us to appreciate the natural world around us.
Download or read book The End of Mr Y written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IF YOU KNEW A BOOK WAS CURSED, WOULD YOU READ IT? When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She's read about its author before, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, and this is his most notorious, and rarest, book. It is also believed to hold a curse. Anyone who's ever read it, including Lumas, has disappeared without trace. With Mr Y under her arm, Ariel is thrust into an adventure of faith, physics, love, death, and everything in between. Part gothic mystery, part time-travelling love story, The End of Mr Y lies somewhere between Shadow of the Wind and Dr Who. Scarlett Thomas sends us on a wild and irresistible quest into our deepest selves and our biggest questions.
