Penguin Putnam
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.

Baker & Taylor
A fifth installment in the popular Nursery Crimes series takes place fourteen years after the 1988 SuperHoop, in a tale in which Thursday finds herself embroiled in cases involving the murders of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple before receiving a death threat of her own. 100,000 first printing.

Blackwell North Amer
Fourteen years after she pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop (in Something Rotten), Thursday Next is grappling with a host of new problems in the BookWorld: a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes and the inexplicable departure 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 Ecclesiastical 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 literary 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.
At home, Thursday's idle sixteen-year-old son would rather sleep all day than follow his destiny as a member of the ChronoGuard, the force that regulates time travel, and save the world from imminent destruction. And when things get really bad - reality book shows look set to transplant reality TV shows, and Goliath invents a transfictional tourist bus - Thursday must once again have her wits about her as she travels to the very limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to rescue the reading experience from almost certain destruction. She captains the ship Moral Dilemma, fends off vicious Mrs. Danvers clones, dispenses with a so-so Thursday Next novel called The Samuel Pepys Fiasco and faces down her most vicious enemy yet: herself.

Baker
& Taylor
Fourteen years after the 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday finds herself entangled in cases involving the murders of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple before receiving a death threat of her own.

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