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.

The second volume in the cyberpunk trilogy A Song Called Youth, this thrilling chapter recounts the struggle between guerilla fighters and neofascists for control of an orbiting space colony.

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 . . .

Divided into sections that represent the breadth of Alison Rossiter's (born 1953) process and vision, 'Expired Paper' offers a comprehensive look at the artist's body of cameraless photo-art?Latent, Landscapes, Pools, Pours, Dips, Blurs, Fours and Collages. Art critic Leah Ollman has been contemplating Rossiter's work for years, and her accompanying text serves as an ideal complement to the images: 'All of the works pay homage to the rich idiosyncrasies of photographic papers across history, and restore a sanctity to the photograph as object. Made without cameras, lenses or film, the works are nothing but process and materiality.' The book also includes a selection of early 20th-century photographic paper packages (which the artist has collected for over 10 years) in a separate booklet.

Penumbra Theatre Company was founded in 1976 by Lou Bellamy as a venue for African American voices within the Twin Cities theatre scene and has stood for more than thirty-five years at the intersection of art, culture, politics, and local community engagement. It has helped launch the careers of many internationally respected theatre artists and has been repeatedly recognized for its artistic excellence as the nation’s foremost African American theatre. Penumbra is the first-ever history of this barrier-breaking institution. Based on extensive interviews with actors, directors, playwrights, producers, funders, and critics, Macelle Mahala’s book offers a multifaceted view of the theatre and its evolution. Penumbra follows the company’s emergence from the influential Black Arts and settlement house movements; the pivotal role Penumbra played in the development of August Wilson’s career and, in turn, how Wilson became an avid supporter and advocate throughout his life; the annual production of Black Nativity as a community-building performance; and the difficult economics of African American theatre production and how Penumbra has faced these challenges for nearly four decades. Penumbra is a testament to how a theatre can respond to and thrive within changing political and cultural realities while contributing on a national scale to the African American presence on the American stage. It is a celebration of theatre as a means of social and cultural involvement—both local and national—and ultimately, of Penumbra’s continuing legacy of theatre that is vibrant, diverse, and vital.

The Ischemic Penumbra presents the current status of concepts and research on this topic and identifies the latest methods for clinicians to quickly and efficiently recognize viable cerebral tissue for enhanced stroke management. Focusing on state-of-the-science technologies and current trends, the book examines imaging strategies utilizing PET, SP

The Penumbra Unbound is the first English language book-length study of the Neo-Taoist thinker Guo Xiang (d. 312 C.E.), commentator on the classic Taoist text, the Zhuangzi. The author explores Guo's philosophy of freedom and spontaneity, explains its coherence and importance, and shows its influence on later Chinese philosophy, particularly Chan Buddhism. The implications of his thought on freedom versus determinism are also considered in comparison to several positions advanced in the history of Western philosophy, notably those of Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte, and Hegel. Guo's thought reinterprets the classical pronouncements about the Tao so that it in no way signifies any kind of metaphysical absolute underlying appearances, but rather means literally "nothing." This absence of anything beyond appearances is the first premise in Guo's development of a theory of radical freedom, one in which all phenomenal things are "self-so," creating and transforming themselves without depending on any justification beyond their own temporary being.

Mangaliso Zolo is a hapless recent graduate, still living in the southern suburbs of Cape Town near the university. Manga has an office job at a large insurance company, but he is anonymous and overlooked in this vast bureaucracy. Penumbra charts Manga's daily struggles with mental illness and the twin pull, from his many friends and acquaintances, between a reckless drug-fuelled lifestyle and charismatic Christianity. The novel brings an alternative experience of Cape Town to life, one far removed from both the gloss of tourism brochures and the familiar poverty of the Cape Flats. Mahlangu's voice is unlike anything South African literature has yet seen and this debut novel dissects young, urban slackers in South Africa with startling precision.

An inspiring story that helps readers to confront the more challenging truths of existence with confidence by offering hope and solutions in these desperate times Written for spiritual seekers interested in stories that satisfy the soul while stretching the mind The themes, plotlines, characters, and motifs are all based on the works of William Shakespeare in some way and enhance one's understanding of the playwright

Guest-edited by Agostino De Rosa, Alessio Bortot and Francesco Bergamo Penumbra, from the Latin paene (almost) and umbra (shadow), can be defined as an intermediate zone of transition between light and shadow. Penumbra is therefore that space, both physical and imaginary, where everything is possible: it is the place of the uncanny, where presence and/or absence can produce wonder or horror. This AD positions the presence of this archetype in the contemporary world of architecture, investigating the ways it permeates different expressive forms – from critical theory to architectural drawing, from design and planning to photography. The contributors illustrate and discuss how penumbra has shaped their creativity and modified their approach to the design process. As a physical phenomenon, penumbra has supra-historical and global connotations; nonetheless, different cultures elaborate its symbolism in different ways. Its wide semantic spectrum powerfully inspires creative forms that hover between fullness and emptiness, presence and absence, past and future. The critical perspectives in this issue offer a wide analysis of penumbra’s expressive potential and the key to an in-depth understanding of this elusive layer of reality. Contributors: Matthias Bärmann, Silvia Benedito, Filippo Bricolo, Edwin Carels, Javier Corvalán, Dris Kettani, Stephen Kite, Giancarlo Mazzanti, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Susanna Pisciella, Renato Rizzi, Paul O Robinson, and Antonella Soldaini. Featured architects and artists: Alexander Savvich Brodsky, Neri&Hu studio, Quay Brothers, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, and Marco Tirelli.