Jasper Fforde, born in London and now living in Wales, is the creator of what he calls "daft novels." His first published book, The Eyre Affair, was rejected 76 times before finding a publisher. It is the first of five published books about Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection in an alternate England. With four books of the very popular Thursday Next series published, Fforde reworked his first written novel into The Big Over Easy, about Nursery Crimes Division detective Jack Spratt and his partner Sergeant Mary Mary. This was followed by The Fourth Bear, a second NCD novel, and Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. While Amazon is accepting pre-orders for Painting by Numbers: A Shades of Grey Novel, it is difficult to find any information about it online. Instead, attention focuses on a third NCD book (and according to Fforde, the last of the series), The Great Tortoise Race and a sixth Thursday Next novel, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing.
Thursday Next Series The Eyre Affair From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition: Welcome to the 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 Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forgin Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. when Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, THursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. | |
Lost in a Good Book From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition: Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bit the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resouce Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens's Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. | |
The Well of Lost Plots From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition: Protecting the world's greatest literature - not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham - is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliche-ridden pulp mystery 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 discoveres that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammarsites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books - like Caversham Heights - are scrapped for salvage. | |
Something Rotten From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition: Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap - as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon's patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn't bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. | |
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels From the Dust Jacket of the hardcover edition: Fourteen years after she pegged out at the 1988 Super Hoop (in Something Rotten), Thursday Next is grappling with a host of new problems in the Book World: a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Homes and the inexplicable departue of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels. The Council of Genres is trying to broker a peace deal between certain antagonistic genres. Racy Novel has been recklessly placed between Eccliesiastical and Feminist, and they are all at each other's throats. Back in Swindon, the government is reporting a dangerously high stupidity surplus, the Stiltonista Cheese Mafia is causing trouble for Thursday and the litereary detective scene isn't what it used to be. And THursday shoulders the burden for the Acme carpet business, which is both a front for SpecOps and a real business for the underemployed force. | |
Nursery Crimes Series The Big Over Easy From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition: Welcome to the seedy underbelly of nursery crime ... Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of Reading's Nursery Crime Division. He's investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, ex-convict and lover of women, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those little pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play. Sprat and his new partner, Sergeant Mary Mary, search through Humpty's sordid past in hopes of finding the key to his death. | |
The Fourth Bear From the Dust Jacket of the hardcover edition: The Gingerbreadman - psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murerer and cookie - is loose in the streets of Reading. But Jack Spratt doesn't get the case. He and Mary Mary have been demoted to Missing Persons because of Jack's poor judgment involving the poisoning of Mr. Bun the baker. Missing persons looks like a boring assignment until a chance encounter at the oddly familiar Deja Vu Hotel leads the pair into the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta "Goldy" Hatchett, star reporter for The Mole. The last witnesses to see her alive were the three bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Anderson's Wood. But all is not as it seems. How could the bears' porridge be at such disparate temperatures when it was poured at the same time? Was there a fourth bear? And if there was, who was he, and why did he try to disguise Goldy's death as a freak accident? | |
To be published in 2008 Painting by Numbers: A Shades of Grey Novel This is scheduled for release on July 22, 2008 and may be pre-ordered. |
