The Well of Lost Plots

The eagerly anticipated third installment in the bestselling Thursday Next series — a genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment!

Thursday Next definitely needs some down time. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through the Western literary canon, Britain's Prose-Op is literally and literaturally at her wits' end — not to mention pregnant. Her job as Miss Havisham's apprentice at Jurisfiction is as hectic as ever — and not just because she has to moderate rage counseling sessions in Wuthering Heights. So what could be more welcome than a restful stint in the Character Exchange Program down in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots?

She's supposed to relax while filling in for a sidekick in an unpublished (and unpublishable) detective procedural socked away below the Great Library in the Well of Lost Plots. But a vacation remains elusive. In no time, Thursday discovers that the Well of Lost Plots 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 top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe, least of all Thursday herself.

Fforde has done it again in this absolutely brilliant feat of literary showmanship. When it comes to sheer wit, literate fantasy, and effervescent originality, nobody can touch this new tour de Fforde.

"Marvelous creations like syntax-slaughtering grammasites and the murderous Minotaur roam this unusual novel's pages....Fforde's sidesplitting sendup of an increasingly antibookish society is a sheer joy." Publishers Weekly

"Third course in a feast of hyperliterary alternate-reality thrillers may prove too rich for some stomachs....Like anchovies, Wagner, and Helmut Newton: will greatly appeal to people with unusual tastes — and befuddle everyone else." Kirkus Reviews

"Anyone who thinks there's really nothing new in fiction hasn't been reading Fforde's wildly inventive, genre-bending Thursday Next series....This will surely delight bookworms — and real people, too." Keir Graff, Booklist

"Fforde has settled comfortably into series mode, producing another fun romp in an alternate universe....Escaped minotaurs, spelling viruses, problems with software upgrades, and Spam for footnotes all contribute to the fun." Library Journal

It's up to Thursday Next, heroine of the bestsellers The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, to navigate the near lawlessness of the Well Of Lost Plots — where plot devices are being sold on the black market, grammasites are running rampant, and unpublished books are being dismantled and thrown into the text sea, never to be looked on again — stop the killings of Jurisfiction personnel, and restore order to the world inside books.

Jasper Fforde has done it again in this absolutely brilliant feat of literary showmanship. Join Thursday Next as she encounters some of the greatest characters in literature and battles deadly villians who literally leap off the page. When it comes to sheer wit, literate fantasy, and effervescent originality, nobody can touch this new Ffordian tour de force.

Jasper Fforde is the author of Lost in a Good Book and The Eyre Affair, the first two books in the Thursday Next fantasy/detective series.