Henrietta is eventually persuaded to take a job as a taxi dancer at a local dance hall - and just when she's beginning to enjoy herself, the floor matron turns up dead. It's 1935, but things still aren't looking up since the big crash and her father's subsequent suicide, leaving Henrietta to care for her antagonistic mother and younger siblings.

Henrietta Von Harmon works as a 26 girl at a corner bar on Chicago's northwest side. But yes, the shift made sense even if a little confusing at first. But given we're following largely the same (or most of the same) characters. More of the time travelers in this story were male versus the first book. It was a little jarring that the narrator for this audiobook is male versus the female voice for the first book, but eventually, I got it. Combined with more poignant stories of people finding a use for the cafe's very particular brand of time travel, and it this all makes for a charming book. And I appreciated this effort to build upon the lore and give us more on how things came to be. The book nicely builds on the lore established in the first book and not only shares new stories of people deciding to use the cafe to travel through time but also reveals more of the back story. But this means a few changes in terms of our cast of characters at the cafe and a few other circumstances.

It has been a few years since the events of the first book, which you could argue may not matter for a cafe that allows for time travel.

Tales from the cafe toshikazu kawaguchi