Sourdough (with Bonus Story the Suitcase Clone) (PB) (2022)

Named a best book of the year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living

Includes the new story The Suitcase Clone

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 undersocialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.

Lois Clary is a software engineer who codes all day and collapses at night, herhuman contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wallfrom which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothersquickly close up shop, but they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdoughstarter they use to bake their bread. Lois must keep it alive, they tell her--feed itdaily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it's just a colony of quietlysinging microorganisms. The bread is irresistible, and it comes out of the oven with a facesomehow imprinted in the crust of every loaf. Soon she's selling it to her employer's cafeteria.The company chef urges Lois to make the bread more widely available, but when she applies for a stand at one of thelegendary Bay Area farmers markets, she is instead invited to join a new, secret market--literally underground--that aims to fuse food and technology. It might be perfect for theprogrammer-turned-baker. But who are these people, exactly? And who is the mysteriousMr. Marrow presiding over it all?

Leavened by the same infectious intelligence that made Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore an instant classic, but taking on even more substantial challenges, Sourdough is Robin Sloan at his chewy and delicious best.