STOP. Before you read any further, I think I should be honest about the consequences of reading Jasper Fforde. Here is an actual quote from an e-mail from my (former?) friend:“I’m not sure if I should thank you or curse you for getting me started on those. I mean, now I have to wait for him to write something else to get my next Fforde fix.”

So, are you ready to get hooked?



The Thursday Next series begins with The Eyre Affair.

If you could step into the pages of any book, where would you go? If the continued existence of classic works of literature were at stake, what would you risk to save them? In his imaginative detective/fantasy series, Jasper Fforde asks these very questions of his feisty female protagonist, Thursday Next.  Fighting for justice and literary integrity, Thursday Next works as a SpecOp-27 Literary Detective in 1985 Britain, during a time when literary theft, forgery of first editions, and other crimes against the humanities are taken quite seriously by the Special Operatives Department. Cloning and time travel are so common they are passé, yet when Thursday’s eccentric uncle invents a way to travel inside of books, the law is unable to control the consequences. Follow the continuing adventures of Thursday Next in The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. The newest (and best!) book in the series Thursday Next in First Among Sequels was released in 2007.



The Nursery Crime series begins with The Big Over Easy.

In his new series, Jasper Fforde presents a blend of nursery rhyme characters and folklore within a police procedural novel to create outlandish fun, with laugh-out-loud humor and absurd characters drawn straight from fairytales and placed in the British town of Reading. It almost goes without saying that Detective Inspector Jack Spratt prefers lean meat, since his first wife died from eating too many fatty foods. With five children to support in his second marriage, Jack must find a way to save his failing career. Jack works in the Reading police force, where the main goal of criminal investigations is to create bestselling accounts in Amazing Crime Stories. Public and professional recognition for detectives can be gained only in the pages of true-crime magazines, through membership in the Guild of Literary Detectives, or with a good conviction rate. Jack Spratt has none of these things. And this summer, Detective Spratt is back --in a brand new adventure, The Fourth Bear.



And in case you judge your books by their merchandizing potential, here are my favorite Jasper Fforde t-shirts on his website, which also includes an index to reveal the hidden gems he’s posted there.