The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple. With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday at every opportunity with synthetic Thursdays, the prediction that Friday's Destiny-Aware colleagues will die in mysterious circumstances, and a looming meteorite that could destroy all human life on earth, Thursday's retirement is going to be anything but easy.
It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Following the pathologist's careful reconstruction of Humpty's shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary Mary are soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody. As Jack and Mary stumble around the streets of Reading in Jack's Lime Green Austin Allegro, the clues pile up, but Jack has his own problems to deal with. And on top of everything else, the Jellyman is coming to town...
The fifth book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Ingenious - I'll watch Jasper Fforde nervously' Terry Pratchett on The Eyre Affair Fourteen years after she pegged out at 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday Next is grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels. Her idle sixteen-year-old would rather sleep all day than save the world from imminent destruction, the government has a dangerously high stupidity surplues, and the Stiltonista Cheese Mafia are causing trouble for Thursday in her hometown of Swindon. Then things begin to get bad. As Reality Book Shows look set to transplant Reality TV Shows and Goliath invent a trans-fictional tourist coach, Thursday must once again have her wits about her as she travels to the very limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to rescue the reading experience from almost certain destruction . . .
Lost in a Good Book von Jasper Fforde
The second book in Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde's phenomenally successful Thursday Next series. 'Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde' - Herald Thursday Next, literary detective and newlywed is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this - but bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible? Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastadon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan. But whose? and why?
»Schrill, schräg abgefahren.« Fuldaer Zeitung Können Sie sich eine Welt vorstellen, in der Literatur so wichtig genommen wird, dass es eine Spezialpolizei gibt, um sie vor Fälschern zu schützen? Als Geheimagentin Thursday Next ihre neue Stelle in Swindon antritt, ahnt sie schon, dass ihr die grösste Herausforderung ihrer Karriere bevorsteht: Niemand anderes als der Erzschurke Acheron Hades hat Jane Eyre aus dem berühmten Roman von Charlotte Brontë entführt, um Lösegeld zu erpressen. Eine Katastrophe für England, das mit dem seit 130 Jahren tobenden Krimkrieg schon genug Sorgen hat. Aber Thursday Next ist eine Superagentin: clever und unerschrocken. Und wenn sie wirklich mal in die Klemme gerät, kommt aus dem Nichts ihr von den Chronoguards desertierter, ziemlich anarchistischer Vater, um für ein paar Minuten die Zeit anzuhalten.
The Last Dragonslayer von Jasper Fforde
In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in magic release form B1-7g. Then the magic started fading away. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for soothsayers and sorcerers. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and even magic carpets are reduced to pizza delivery. So it's a surprise when the visions start. Not only do they predict the death of the Last Dragon at the hands of a dragonslayer, they also point to Jennifer, and say something is coming. Big Magic . . .
The fourth book in the ingenious Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Don't ask, just read it. Fforde is a true original' - Sunday Express on Lost in a Good Book Thursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, returns to her native Swindon accompanied by a child of two, a pair of dodos and Hamlet, who is on a fact-finding mission in the real world. Thursday has been despatched to capture escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine but even so, now seems as good a time as any to retrieve her husband Landen from his state of eradication at the hands of the Chronoguard. It's not going to be easy. Thursday's former colleagues at the department of Literary Detectives want her to investigate a spate of cloned Shakespeares, the Goliath Corporation are planning to switch to a new Faith based corporate management system and the Neanderthals feel she might be the Chosen One who will lead them to genetic self-determination. With help from Hamlet, her uncle and time-travelling father, Thursday faces the toughest adventure of her career. Where is the missing President-for-life George Formby? Why is it imperative for the Swindon Mallets to win the World Croquet League final? And why is it so difficult to find reliable childcare?
The sixth instalment of Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde's sensational Thursday Nextseries. 'Fforde's books are more than just an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of Dickens or Pratchett' - Independent It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister? All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worth of her illustrious namesake. The written Thursday is soon hot on the trail of her factual alter-ego, and quickly stumbles upon a plot so fiendish that it threatens the very BookWorld itself.
The third book in the phenomenal Thursday Next series from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. In the words of one critic: 'Don't ask. Just read it.' Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is created), Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled 'Caversham Heights'. Landen, her husband, is still eradicated, Aornis Hades is meddling with Thursday's memory, and Miss Havisham - when not sewing up plot-holes in 'Mill on the Floss' - is trying to break the land-speed record on the A409. But something is rotten in the state of Jurisfiction. Perkins is 'accidentally' eaten by the minotaur, and Snell succumbs to the Mispeling Vyrus. As a shadow looms over popular fiction, Thursday must keep her wits about her and discover not only what is going on, but also who she can trust to tell about it ... With grammasites, holesmiths, trainee characters, pagerunners, baby dodos and an adopted home scheduled for demolition, 'The Well of Lost Plots' is at once an addictively exciting adventure and an insight into how books are made, who makes them - and why there is no singular for 'scampi'. With grammasites, holesmiths, trainee characters, pagerunners, baby dodos and an adopted home scheduled for demolition, 'The Well of Lost Plots' is at once an addictively exciting adventure and an insight into how books are made, who makes them - and why there is no singular for 'scampi'.
Der 6. Band der Kultserie um Thursday Next - jetzt im Taschenbuch Panik in der BuchWelt: ein Krieg der Genres scheint bevorzustehen. Nur Thursday Next kann mit ihren speziellen diplomatischen Fähigkeiten das Schlimmste verhindern. Doch kurz vor den Friedensgesprächen verschwindet sie spurlos. Es ist nun an BuchThursday, der geschriebenen Version von Thursday Next, die bisher ein beschauliches Dasein in einem ruhigen Eckchen der Fantasy führte, die Lage zu retten. Tatsächlich kommt sie einer finsteren Verschwörung auf die Spur. Dann stürzt zu allem Überfluss ein eBook ab, die Trümmer verunstalten die halbe BuchWelt. Schon werden die Metaphern knapp ...
Jasper Fforde is currently number two on my most-read-author's list. I am a huge fan, as in I have read all of his novels; I recommend his books to friends, neighbors, and semi-acquaintances, and Jasper Fforde is way, way up there on my authors-I-want-to-meet-in-person list. (And he has a really cool name, too.) I read my first Jasper Fforde book in 2006. I started with The Eyre Affair, the first of Fforde's Thursday Next books, and rocketed through the first four books in the series. Even better, my husband loved these books too, and we listened to them together on road trips. I highly recommend the audio version. Here's the thing about Jasper Fforde's novels: they are so quirky and insanely creative. Check out the premise for his dystopia Shades of Grey: Eddie Russett lives some 200 years or so after the Something That Happened. The world is now run by a Colortocracy. Those who can see colors are known as Chromatics. One's social status is determined by what color you can see and how well you perceive it. Violets rule. Red is the lowest of the Chromatics, but being a Grey is worse. Greys live at the bottom of the totem pole and do all the grunt work. Eddie is Red, and a high perceiving Red at that, though he's yet to take the test that will determine his perception percentage. He's shipped off to a small town to do a chair census. There he meets Jane, a Grey, and starts to question everything. Pretty wild, but the beauty of all of Fforde's books are all the little details. In Shades of Grey we have (to mention a few) swan attacks, marriage negotiations, healing with colors, the spoon shortage, Apocryphals. Fforde's newest series is also his first Young Adult series. The Last Dragonslayer is the story of Jennifer Strange, foundling and acting manager of the magic corporation Kazam, of the Kingdom of Hereford in the Ununited Kingdoms. Bordering Hereford are the dragonlands, and there is one dragon left, but pre-cogs (those who can see the future) begin having visions that the last dragon will die on Sunday. The Last Dragonslayer is chalked full of magic and dragons, but they are magic and dragons as only Jasper Fforde can craft, which means kooky, funny, and wholly original. The wizards have been reduced to using their magic to do things like rewire houses. The wizards all all hilarious, from their self-given titles, to their areas of expertise. Jennifer Strange is a strong character who, like Fforde's Thursday Next, has more jobs than any one person should. The Quarkbeast is just about the most awesome pet ever, and I quite liked Tiger as well. I was absolutely giddy when I received a review copy of the second in the series, The Song of the Quarkbeast, due for release in the U.S. on September 3, 2013. In this installment, the wizidrical levels are on the rise, and Jennifer Strange is busier than ever running Kazam Mystical Arts Management. She's up against those who are more interested in exploiting the magical arts for financial gain than they are in upholding the noble magical tradition. I love how Fforde upends our expectations for the fantasy genre in these novels--Jennifer Strange can't do magic, magicians use their magic for rather mundane tasks. Fforde's genre-mixing is always invigorating. I really enjoyed how this book spent more time with the wizards of Kazam. Full Price, Half Price, Cadet Perkins Perkins, Lady Mawgon, Wizard Moobin, The Transient Moose, The Once Magnificent Boo: even their names are funny. Their quirky personalities are one of my favorite things about this series. I grinned the whole way through this book. Twelves books by Jasper Fforde, and I would gladly read more.
It took some time to get into Jasper Fforde's Early Riser, to find my reading groove due to its first-person narrative and peculiar alternate world.
The Eyre Affair Review: The first book in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next Literary Detective Series is wacky, zany and addictive - candy in a book.
Learn more about the author here
Auteur : Jasper Fforde Genre : science-fiction, policier Editions 10/18 Année 2004 410 pages Résumé Thursday Next travaille ...
Totally enchanting, warm and funny' Ciara Smyth, author of Not My Problem`Neurodiversity has a voice, and it's witty and uplifting and enlightening all at once' Jasper Fforde, author of The Eyre Affair'A lovely book' Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie ProjectLonglisted for the Branford Boase AwardPhoebe is autistic. She prefers to stay in her comfort zone: walking her dog, writing fantasy fiction, surviving school with as few incidents as possible. When her best (and only) friend rebels and gets a secret boyfriend, Phoebe reluctantly agrees to cover for her. Before long, Phoebe's dealing with all sorts of things she'd rather not, like deception, fashionable jackets, and the bewildering politics of the school chess club. Breaking the rules has never been Phoebe's thing, but as events take a seriously unexpected turn, she realises there's more to her than she ever imagined . . .; 336 pages; 03/08/2023
The third installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit Jasper Fforde has done it again in this genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through Western literature, resourceful BookWorld literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like the one she has taken up residence in—are scrapped for salvage. To make matters worse, a murderer is stalking the personnel of Jurisfiction and it’s up to Thursday to save the day. A brilliant feat of literary showmanship filled with wit, fantasy, and effervescent originality, this Ffordian tour de force will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse.
For Independent Bookstore Day on April 24th, I wanted to celebrate lesser known books that many people have never heard of! Okay, let’s be honest, if you’re a book lover, you’ve probably heard of some of these books. But hopefully in this list of the 50 Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of, there will at ...
Books based on fairy tales and folktales have a special place in my heart. There are so many of these beautifully re-imagined stories or fun and inventive twists on well-worn tales that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I tend to prefer books written with an adult audience in mind, and I was surprised that ...
A long time ago Magic faded away, leaving behind only yo-yos, the extremely useful compass-pointing-to-North enchantment and the spell that keeps bicycles from falling over. Things are about to change. Magical power is on the rise and King Snodd IV of Hereford has realised that he who controls Magic controls almost anything. Only one person stands between Snodd and his plans for unimaginable power and riches. Meet Jennifer Strange, sixteen-year-old acting manager of Kazam, the employment agency for sorcerers and soothsayers. She may only have one functioning Wizard and her faithful assistant 'Tiger' Prawns to help her. But one thing is certain: she will not relinquish the noble powers of Magic to big business and commerce without a fight.
About the Book The "New York Times" bestseller is the first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative. Book Synopsis NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The first novel in the renowned Thursday Next series, which "combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (The Wall Street Journal). "A literary wonderland [that] recalls Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series [and] the works of Lewis Carroll."--USA Today Meet Thursday Next, "part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times), a literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend--and welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wadsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter a novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. Don't miss any of Jasper Fforde's delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR - LOST IN A GOOD BOOK - THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS - SOMETHING ROTTEN - FIRST AMONG SEQUELS - ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING - THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT Review Quotes "Neatly delivers alternate history, Monty Pythonesque comedy skits, Grand Guignol supervillains, thwarted lovers, po-mo intertextuality, political commentary, time travel, vampires, absent-minded inventors, a hard-boiled narrator, and lots, lots more. . . . Suspend your disbelief, find a quiet corner and just surrender to the storytelling voice of the unstoppable, ever-resourceful Thursday Next." --The Washington Post "Fforde's imaginative novel will satiate readers looking for a Harry Potter-esque tale. . . . The Eyre Affair's literary wonderland recalls Douglas Adams's Hitchhikers series, the works of Lewis Carroll and Woody Allen's The Kugelmass Episode."--USA Today "[Thursday Next is] part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Delightfully clever . . . Filled with clever wordplay, literary allusion and bibliowit, The Eyre Affair combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but its quirky charm is all its own." --The Wall Street Journal "Jasper Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, is a spirited sendup of genre fiction--it's part hardboiled mystery, part time-machine caper--that features a sassy, well-read 'Special Operative in literary detection' named Thursday Next, who will put you more in mind of Bridget Jones than Miss Marple. Fforde delivers almost every sentence with a sly wink, and he's got an easy way with wordplay, trivia, and inside jokes. . . . Fforde's verve is rarely less than infectious." --The New York Times Book Review "Jasper Fforde's genre-busting, whoppingly imaginative first novel, The Eyre Affair, is packed with literary allusions . . . .Thanks to Fforde's terrific imagination, this definitely will not be the winter of our discontent." --The Miami Herald "For sheer inventiveness his book is hard to beat. The Eyre Affair is an exuberant mélange of crime, comedy and alternative history." --Houston Chronicle "The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde could hardly be more delightful. . . . It takes a bold adventurer to play fast and loose with literature, and that's what we have in Thursday Next and Fforde." --Newsday "[Fforde] delivers multiple plot twists, rampant literary references and streams of wild metafictional invention in a novel that places literature at the center of the pop-cultural universe. . . . It all adds up to a brainy, cheerfully twisted adventure." --Time Out New York "A blend of suspense and silliness, two parts fantasy (think Alice in Wonderland meet Superman), two parts absurdity (anything by Carl Hiaasen) and one part mystery (Agatha Christie meets Sue Grafton)." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Her name is Next. Thursday Next. And her story is as amusing and intriguing as the summary of her story told within the pages of The Eyre Affair. Next is a literary detective in a world so enamored with the written world that Shakespeare's Richard III is staged nightly as if it were The Rocky Horror Picture Show . . . . The novel's writing flows and the imaginative twists and turns in Next's world are handled smoothly." --Sun-Sentinel 'Always ridiculous, often hilarious ... blink and you miss a vital narrative leap. There are shades of Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll, 'Clockwork Orange' and '1984'. And that's just for starters' - Time Out London "What Fforde is pulling is a variation on the classic Monty Python gambit: the incongruous juxtaposition og low comedy and high erudition - this scam has not been pulled off with such off-hand finesse and manic verve since the Pythons shut up shop. 'The Eyre Affair' is a silly book for smart people: postmodernism played as raw, howling farce"― Independent (London) About the Author Jasper Fforde spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Times bestseller list with The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series. He is also the author of Early Riser and The Constant Rabbit; the Nursery Crime Adventures series; the Shades of Grey series; and the Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television as a movie. He lives in Wales.