Sweeping from Europe’s legendary Renaissance book printers to the new frontiers of the Information Age, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a rollicking adventure and an inspiring ode to the published word.

Like many victims of the Great Recession, the web designer Clay Jannon finds himself out of a job. Then, thanks to serendipity (and his ability to climb a ladder like a monkey), Clay lands a new gig working the night shift at a mysterious San Francisco shop, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay begins to wonder how the store stays in business. There are only a few customers. They come in repeatedly, but never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. Clay soon ropes his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on, revealing tantalizing secrets that can be traced back to the world’s first typeset books. In this captivating debut novel, Robin Sloan lures us to a hallowed bookstore that we’ll never want to leave, where a mysterious collection raises compelling questions about the nature of our love for books and the future of reading itself.