Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

By Robin Sloan

Genre- Mystery

       This book is about a guy named Clay who is a programmer and lives in San Francisco. He was broke so when he wandered  into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and found that they were looking for employees so he then started to work there. He noticed that they had very few customers yet they stayed open all of the time. When there was a customer, he had to write all about the customer in a special book. All of the customers wanted books from the shelves that he was not allowed to touch or look into. One day he finally decided to open it and was surprised to see the book was in code and he could not read it. The next day a girl from google named Kat walks in and they start to talk. Clay was making a 3D model of the store on his computer and Kat walked in. She suggested to make it so that Clay could see when the books were taken and when they were returned. This lead to scanning a book at google and when you watched the animation of books going in and out a face formed. When Clay shows Mr. Penumbra he gets excited but the next day he was gone. From rumors he found out he was going to New York and Clay decided to follow Mr. Penumbra and that is where the real adventure began.