Table of Contents

1. A Woman Named Thursday Next
2. Gad's Hill
3. Back at My Desk
4. Acheron Hades
5. Search for the Guilty, Punish the Innocent
6. Jane Eyre: A Short Excursion in the Novel
7. The Goliath Corporation
8. Airship to Swimdon
9. The Next Family
10. The Finis Hotel, Swindon
11. Polly Flashes Upon the Inward Eye
12. SpecOps-27: The Literary Detectives
13. The Church at Capel-y-ffin
14. Lunch with Bowden
15. Hello and Goodbye, Mr. Quaverley
16. Sturmey Archer and Felix7
17. SpecOps-17: Suckers and Biters
18. Landen Again
19. The Very Irrev. Joffy Next
20. Dr. Runcible Spoon>br> 21. Hades and Goliath
22. The Waiting Game
23. The Drop
24. Martin Chuzzlewit Is Reprieved
25. Time Enough for Contemplation
26. The Earthcrossers
27. Hades Finds Another Manuscript
28. Haworth House
29. Jane Eyre
30. A Groundwell of Popular Feeling
31. The People's Republic of Wales
32. Thornfield Hall
33. The Book Is Written
34. Nearly the End of Their Book
35. Nearly the End of Our Book
36. Married

About the Author

From the author of THE CHRONICLES OF KAZAM series, including The Last Dragonslayer

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling series of Thursday Next series novels, which includes Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and the upcoming The Woman Who Died A Lot. He is also the author of The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear of the Nursery Crime series, and Shades of Grey. More recently Fforde's work includes The Last Dragonslayer, The Chronicles of Kazam series.  Visit jasperfforde.com.

Reviews

“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)

Adult/High School-A delightful first book in a proposed series set in an alternative and offbeat Britain of 1985 and featuring Literary Detective Thursday Next. England is still fighting the Crimean War with Imperialist Russia, and the prevailing culture is based on literature. When the original manuscript of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit is stolen, it is a high crime indeed, and Next is called in to help catch the culprit. To make matters worse, her "mad as pants" but brilliant uncle has created a machine that could cause all kinds of literary mayhem. This title has a cast of complete nutters. Acheron Hades, the world's third most wanted villain, has just the right mix of evil and charm to make readers look forward to meeting the first and second most wanted. Be warned that minor passersby may come round again in this "mad tea party" of a story. The novel has the surrealism and satire of Douglas Adams, the nonsense and wordplay of Lewis Carroll, and the descriptive detail of Connie Willis. What sets Fforde's work apart, however, is its winsome heroine. This is a highly entertaining mystery with social satire, time travel, fantasy, science fiction, and romance thrown in to the well-written mix.-Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Surreal and hilariously funny, this alternate history, the debut novel of British author Fforde, will appeal to lovers of zany genre work (think Douglas Adams) and lovers of classic literature alike. The scene: Great Britain circa 1985, but a Great Britain where literature has a prominent place in everyday life. For pennies, corner Will-Speak machines will quote Shakespeare; Richard III is performed with audience participation la Rocky Horror and children swap Henry Fielding bubble-gum cards. In this world where high lit matters, Special Operative Thursday Next (literary detective) seeks to retrieve the stolen manuscript of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. The evil Acheron Hades has plans for it: after kidnapping Next's mad-scientist uncle, Mycroft, and commandeering Mycroft's invention, the Prose Portal, which enables people to cross into a literary text, he sends a minion into Chuzzlewit to seize and kill a minor character, thus forever changing the novel. Worse is to come. When the manuscript of Jane Eyre, Next's favorite novel, disappears, and Jane herself is spirited out of the book, Next must pursue Hades inside Charlotte Bront's masterpiece. The plethora of oddly named characters can be confusing, and the story's episodic nature means that the action moves forward in fits and starts. The cartoonish characters are either all good or all bad, but the villain's comeuppance is still satisfying. Witty and clever, this literate romp heralds a fun new series set in a wonderfully original world. (Jan. 28) Forecast: With a six-city author tour, a well-conceived Web site at www.thursdaynext.com and crossover appeal to Bront fans, this is likely to attract more attention than the usual first genre novel. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

"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 melange 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)