Jasper Fforde Books In Order

Thursday Next Books In Publication Order

  1. The Eyre Affair (2001)
  2. Lost in a Good Book (2002)
  3. The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
  4. Something Rotten (2004)
  5. First Among Sequels (2007)
  6. One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (2011)
  7. The Woman Who Died A Lot (2012)

Nursery Crime Books In Publication Order

  1. The Big Over Easy (2005)
  2. The Fourth Bear (2006)

Shades Of Grey Books In Publication Order

  1. Shades of Grey (2009)

Chronicles Of Kazam Books In Publication Order

  1. The Last Dragonslayer (2010)
  2. The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011)
  3. The Eye of Zoltar (2014)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Early Riser (2018)
  2. The Constant Rabbit (2020)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Relics, Wrecks and Ruins (2021)

Thursday Next Book Covers

Nursery Crime Book Covers

Shades Of Grey Book Covers

Chronicles Of Kazam Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Jasper Fforde Books Overview

The Eyre Affair

In Jasper Fforde’s Great Britain, circa 1985, 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 and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bront ‘s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde’s ingenious fantasy enhanced by a Web site that re creates the world of the novel unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content Penzler Pick, January 2002: When I first heard the premise of this unique mystery, I doubted that a first time author could pull off a complicated caper involving so many assumptions, not the least of which is a complete suspension of disbelief. Jasper Fforde is not only up to the task, he exceeds all expectations.

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens’ enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England’s cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom.

Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That’s why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.

Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped.

How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You’ll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester and a familiar ending. Otto Penzler

Lost in a Good Book

If Thursday thought she could avoid the spotlight after her heroic escapades in the pages of Jane Eyre, she was sorely mistaken. The unforgettable literary detective whom Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times calls ‘part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry’ had another think coming. The love of her life has been eradicated by Goliath, everyone’s favorite corrupt multinational. To rescue him Thursday must retrieve a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of ‘The Raven.’ But Poe is off limits to even the most seasoned literary interloper. Enter a professional: the man hating Miss Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations. As her new apprentice, Thursday keeps her motives secret as she learns the ropes of Jurisfiction, where she moonlights as a Prose Resource Operative inside books. As if jumping into the likes of Kafka, Austen, and Beatrix Potter’s Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies weren’t enough, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Fforde’s magnificent new adventure, the second installment in what is sure to become a classic series of literary fantasy.

The Well of Lost Plots

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’. In the words of one critic: ‘Don’t ask. Just read it.’

Something Rotten

Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction, enough with Emperor Zhark’s pointlessly dramatic entrances, outbreaks of slapstick raging across pulp genres, and hacking her hair off to fill in for Joan of Arc. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. Caring for both is more than a full time job and Thursday decides it is definitely time to get her husband Landen back, if only to babysit. Luckily, those responsible for Landen s eradication, The Goliath Corporation formerly an oppressive multinational conglomerate, now an oppressive multinational religion have pledged to right the wrong. But returning to SpecOps isn t a snap. When outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine seeks to get himself elected dictator, he whips up a frenzy of anti Danish sentiment and demands mass book burnings. The return of Swindon s patron saint bearing divine prophecies could spell the end of the world within five years, possibly faster if the laughably terrible Swindon Mallets don t win the Superhoop, the most important croquet tournament in the land. And if that s not bad enough, The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover? Can she prevent the world from plunging into war? Can she vanquish Kaine before he realizes his dream of absolute power? And, most important, will she ever find reliable child care? Find out in this totally original, action packed romp, sure to be another escapist thrill for Jasper Fforde s growing legion of fans.

First Among Sequels

Literary sleuth Thursday Next is out to save literature in the fifth installment of Jasper Fforde’s wildly popular series

Beloved for his prodigious imagination, his satirical gifts, his literate humor, and sheer silliness, Jasper Fforde has delighted book lovers since Thursday Next first appeared in The Eyre Affair, a genre send up hailed as an instant classic. Since the no nonsense literary detective from Swindon made her debut, literature has never been quite the same. Neither have nursery rhymes, for that matter. With two successful books of the Nursery Crime series under his belt, Fforde takes up once again the brilliant adventures of his signature creation in the highly anticipated fifth installment of the Thursday Next series. And it s better than ever.

It s been fourteen years since Thursday pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, and Friday is now a difficult sixteen year old. However, Thursday s got bigger problems. Sherlock Holmes is killed at the Rheinback Falls and his series is stopped in its tracks. And before this can be corrected, Miss Marple dies suddenly in a car accident, bringing her series to a close as well. When Thursday receives a death threat clearly intended for her written self, she realizes what s going on there is a serial killer on the loose in the Bookworld. And that s not all The Goliath Corporation is trying to deregulate book travel. Naturally, Thursday must travel to the outer limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to triumph against increasing odds.

Packed with word play, bizarre and entertaining subplots, and old fashioned suspense, Thursday s return is sure to be celebrated by Jasper s fanatical fans and the critics who have loved him since the beginning.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

The newest tour de force from The New York Times bestselling author of Thursday Next and Shades of Grey. Jasper Fforde’s exuberant return to the fantastical BookWorld opens during a time of great unrest. All out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a hero*ine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday. The Council wants her to pretend to be the real Thursday and travel as a peacekeeping emissary to the warring factions. A trip up the mighty Metaphoric River beckons a trip that will reveal a fiendish plot that threatens the very fabric of the BookWorld itself. Once again New York Times bestselling author Jasper Fforde has a field day gleefully blending satire, romance, and thriller with literary allusions galore in a fantastic adventure through the landscape of a frisky and fertile imagination. Fans will rejoice that their favorite character in the Fforde universe is back.

The Big Over Easy

Jasper Fforde does it again with a dazzling new series starring Inspector Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crime Division Jasper Fforde’s bestselling Thursday Next series has delighted readers of every genre with its literary derring do and brilliant flights of fancy. In The Big Over Easy, Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division. He s investigating the murder of ovoid D class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play. BACKCOVER: A wonderfully readable riot…
A cleverly plotted, magically overstuffed yet amazingly digestible book…
This summer s perfect beach read for eggheads. The Wall Street Journal As if the Marx brothers were let loose in the children s section of a strange bookstore. USA Today Pythonesque…
Like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, this one is abundantly playful without being truly geared for children. Anyone who has ever been read a nursery rhyme…
can appreciate Mr. Fforde s outlandish joking. Janet Maslin, The New York Times

The Fourth Bear

Jack Spratt and Mary Mary return in their second adventure from the inimitable Jasper Fforde Five years ago, Viking introduced Jasper Fforde and his upsidedown, inside out literary crime masterpieces. And as they move from Thursday Next to Jack Spratt’s Nursery Crimes, his audience is insatiable and growing. Now, with The Fourth Bear, Jack Spratt and Mary Mary take on their most dangerous case so far as a murderous cookie stalks the streets of Reading. The Gingerbreadman psychopath, sad*ist, genius, and killer is on the loose. But it isn t Jack Spratt s case. He and Mary Mary have been demoted to Missing Persons following Jack s poor judgment involving the poisoning of Mr. Bun the baker. Missing Persons looks like a boring assignment until a chance encounter leads them into the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta ‘Goldy’ Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Mole. Last to see her alive? The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen s wood. But all is not what it seems. How could the bears porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time? Why did Mr. and Mrs. Bear sleep in separate beds? 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? Jack answers all these questions and a few others besides, rescues Mary Mary from almost certain death, and finally meets The Fourth Bear and the Gingerbreadman face to face.

Shades of Grey

From the bestselling author of Thursday Next a brilliant new novel about a world where social order and destiny are dictated by the colors you can see

Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low level House of Red and can see his own color but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just Shades of Grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.

Eddie’s world wasn’t always like this. There’s evidence of a never discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.

Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark, unlit side of the village. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

Stunningly imaginative, very funny, tightly plotted, and with sly satirical digs at our own society, this novel is for those who loved Thursday Next but want to be transported somewhere equally wild, only darker; a world where the black and white of moral standpoints have been reduced to Shades of Grey.

The Last Dragonslayer

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…

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