Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todaySourdough
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“A quirky, feel good story that leaves you craving fresh bread. Set in San Francisco, Lois Clary is unfulfilled in her high paying robotics job. She is gifted a unique sourdough starter which prompts her on a very special journey of self discovery.”
— Amy • Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers
Bookseller recommendation
“Take technology, food, and (nerdy) pop-culture, add complex characters and a possibly sentient sourdough starter for a well-paced, fun novel. (Added tidbit: Sloan made the interlude music with an AI program.)”
— Marika • Porter Square Books
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 under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living
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.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market—and a whole new world opens up.
Includes bonus material that provides an audiobook-only glimpse at the evolving relationship between Lois and Slurry, the company upon whose dystopian meal replacements she and her engineer friends all subsist.
"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." — The Washington Post
"Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel..." — Chicago Tribune
Robin Sloan grew up in Michigan and now splits his time between San Francisco Bay Are and the San Joaquin Valley of California. He is the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough.
Reviews
2018 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration for Adult Listeners
"Narrator Therese Plummer's lively performance highlights Lois's cautious curiosity and delight of discovery as she transforms from non-cooking AI geek to sought-after baker. This quirky story is well served by Plummer's enthusiasm..." -AudioFile