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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's summary
A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life - mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone - and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, 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 “checking 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’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior 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.
With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the 21st century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that’s rare to the world of literary fiction. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious listener, no matter the time of day.
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It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
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Parade
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
By: Rachel Cusk
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Sourdough
- A Novel
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Read the print version if you are from SF Bay Area
- By Julie on 10-07-17
By: Robin Sloan
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Ajax Penumbra 1969
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Penumbra Prequel Is Too Slight
- By Dubi on 03-06-14
By: Robin Sloan
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Moonbound
- A Novel
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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It is eleven thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history.
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Now one of my favorite books
- By Leif Hansen on 07-06-24
By: Robin Sloan
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The Suitcase Clone
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.
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Is it possible to smile through a whole book?
- By Maryb on 08-14-22
By: Robin Sloan
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Annabel Scheme
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Robin Sloan
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.
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It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
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Parade
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
By: Rachel Cusk
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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Sullivan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, her eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs - the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store's overwhelmed shelves. But when Joey McGinty, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore's back room, Lydia's life comes unglued.
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Here's a bright idea....
- By Erin S on 07-15-17
By: Matthew Sullivan
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Sing Like Fish
- How Sound Rules Life Under Water
- By: Amorina Kingdon
- Narrated by: Angelina Rocca
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, humans ignored sound in the “silent world” of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn’t perceive, didn’t exist. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems.
By: Amorina Kingdon
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The Library of the Unwritten
- A Novel from Hell's Library, Book 1
- By: A. J. Hackwith
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing - a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.
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Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover
- By Terry on 01-21-20
By: A. J. Hackwith
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There Is No Ethan
- How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish
- By: Anna Akbari
- Narrated by: Anna Akbari, Justin Price
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2011, three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money—he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis.
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An instant classic
- By 6catz on 06-07-24
By: Anna Akbari
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The Stardust Grail
- A Novel
- By: Yume Kitasei
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future. Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.
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Great story, interesting characters
- By Anonymous User on 07-08-24
By: Yume Kitasei
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In the Hands of Men
- A Novel
- By: Gin Sexsmith
- Narrated by: Devery Jacobs
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunted by the loss of her cousin, Delilah has curated a world of revenge—playing judge, jury and executioner while, you know, searching for love. Maybe murdering gives her the control she craves. Maybe it fills the gaping hole that Cedar left when she disappeared. Maybe this rage is ancestral, dating back to all of the Indigenous women before her whose cases were closed without much of a search.
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Somewhat sexist, and racist
- By James Pinkerton on 07-24-24
By: Gin Sexsmith
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Stone & Sky
- The Stone & Sky Series, Book 1
- By: Z.S. Diamanti
- Narrated by: Peter Leppard
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Orin is a sworn protector. As a stalwart member of the Griffin Guard, he’s proud to protect the kingdom against a dreaded nation of orcs. But when the fires of war burn bright from the north, his entire squadron falls to deadly wyvern riders, leaving the devastated Orin bloody and alone. With his squad dead, Orin has his mind set on saving others from the same fate.
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Bringing the fantasy to life
- By Brianna L. Earlley on 04-06-24
By: Z.S. Diamanti
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Take What You Need
- A Novel
- By: Idra Novey
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine, Idra Novey
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind.
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Great Novel!!!!!!!!
- By Gerardo on 03-17-23
By: Idra Novey
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Margo's Got Money Troubles
- A Novel
- By: Rufi Thorpe
- Narrated by: Elle Fanning
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
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Fabulous
- By EM new Mom on 07-14-24
By: Rufi Thorpe
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The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep
- A Novel
- By: H. G. Parry
- Narrated by: Calum Gittins
- Length: 18 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: He can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob - a young lawyer with a normal house, a normal fiancee, and an utterly normal life - hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his life's duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other. But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world...and for once, it isn't Charley's doing.
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Exciting, Heartwarming, and Fun
- By Amazon Customer on 11-18-20
By: H. G. Parry
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American Rapture
- By: CJ Leede
- Narrated by: Moniqua Plante
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin… The end times are coming.
By: CJ Leede
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The Deep Sky
- A Novel
- By: Yume Kitasei
- Narrated by: Sarah Skaer
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.
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a Sci Fi with very little knowledge
- By craftuser on 04-10-24
By: Yume Kitasei
What listeners say about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joan
- 10-17-12
Smart, Quirky and Satisfying
If you could sum up Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in three words, what would they be?
See my title.
What did you like best about this story?
The story never let go of me.
What about Ari Fliakos’s performance did you like?
His reading was just delightful. I believe he enjoyed the book as much as I did.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Delight; extreme delight.
Any additional comments?
I've read a lot of books in my 64 years. I'm now nearly blind and depend upon audiobooks. This book comes close to making up for the differences between reading a book and listening to a book.
I found it very satisfying to listen to this particular reader tell this particular tale. It's an absorbing story that combines old knowledge and new knowledge, books and technology with the interests and the needs of the young and the old.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of my current favorites, and, if it stands up to a few re-readings, it might be a candidate for my list of lifetime favorites
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8 people found this helpful
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- tigrrlily04
- 05-21-13
Should be categorized as teen lit
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Maybe....it was a fun story at first, but about half way through I got very bored. It's definitely a teen lit-type book. If I had that expectation going into it I may have enjoyed it more, but maybe not. It got a bit annoying at times.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Courtney Frost
- 04-17-17
Best Book I've Listened To So Far
Would you consider the audio edition of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore to be better than the print version?
Yes, although I have never read the print version. I loved this book so much due in part to the narrator. The voice and portrayal of the story are amazing and kept me intrigued. Something about the voice made it good to listen to and made me more excited to listen to the book during my drives to and from work.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Penumbra. He's mysterious and grandpa-like.
Which scene was your favorite?
My favorite scene is when Penumbra realizes that the main character (whose name escapes me at the moment) utilized technology to solve the founder's puzzle. He's a little shocked, but no less impressed by the accomplishment.
Any additional comments?
Amazing book. LISTEN TO IT!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jeri
- 07-13-15
What an unexpected surprise...
What did you love best about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore?
This was a magical book, without magic or gimicks, mostly.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Clay was telling the story and he was really interesting. I guess I liked him because he was sort of an underachiever. Bright guy, knows he should be doing something, but not sure what. Just like a lot of people.
What does Ari Fliakos bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Terrific narrator. differentiated the voices well, got the right age/gender without straining the girl/women voices. And he sounded enthusiastic, as if he was enjoying the story.
Any additional comments?
THis is one of those books that escape classification. But really a joy to listen to. I keep wondering about it.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alexis
- 07-09-15
Too Technical
Great book where old meets new. the narrator is easy to listen to and the story keeps you thinking. But, I'm pretty sure if I weren't a graphic designer myself I wouldn't understand half the tech terms thrown around in this book. It was a good read but I found myself zoning out alot as the narrator went on explaining all the tools he used on the books.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alex H
- 04-01-13
read it, really!
What made the experience of listening to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore the most enjoyable?
Mr. Penumbra himself.
What did you like best about this story?
the way backlist
What does Ari Fliakos bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Adds desperation and he delivers the irony perfectly!
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
when is a bookstore just a bookstore?
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1 person found this helpful
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- Emily
- 12-11-17
Good & Bad Volley
This is one of those quick reads that’s enjoyable, but not a particularly great investment of time. It’s an entertaining story and starts off well, but then it goes in waves. The writing volleys between bad modern dialogue and super interesting historical context setup. If you need a quick listen on a travel day, it may be a good choice, but it’s not something I’d read again.
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- Amanda
- 04-17-15
Lovely surprise
I usually don't write reviews but this book was a lovely surprise. Started just a wee slow but then the characters and story came about. The story was a engaging and thought provoking at times. Nice characters and intriguing little mystery
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- Camila
- 03-28-16
Fun
What made the experience of listening to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore the most enjoyable?
Enjoyable to listen to, but I'm glad I bought this during a sale. It's a fun distraction, but not something I think anyone HAS to read. Great Reader.
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- pseudonym
- 10-19-12
A WILD RIDE!!
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is just a great story. When the main character Clay finds himself in Mr Penumbra's strange world he embarks on a wonderful journey. He makes friends and solves mysteries with technology and his own sometimes surprising resourcefulness. The narrator is a wonderful fit for the main character and brings the story to life. I would recommend to anyone who just likes to get caught up in the ride of a lighthearted and funny adventure.
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