Search results for ""Author Jasper Fforde""

The seventh book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series by Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde' - HeraldThe BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple. Thursday is faced with an array of family problems - son Friday's lack of focus since his career in the Chronoguard was relegated to a might-have-been, daughter Tuesday's difficulty perfecting the Anti-Smote shield needed to thwart an angry Deity's promise to wipe Swindon off the face of the earth, and Jenny, who doesn't exist. And that's not all. With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday at every opportunity with synthetic Thursdays, the prediction that Friday's Destiny-Aware colleagues will die in mysterious circumstances, and a looming meteorite that could destroy all human life on earth, Thursday's retirement is going to be anything but easy . . .

Read more less

The fifth book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Ingenious - I'll watch Jasper Fforde nervously' Terry Pratchett on The Eyre AffairFourteen years after she pegged out at 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday Next is grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels.Her idle sixteen-year-old would rather sleep all day than save the world from imminent destruction, the government has a dangerously high stupidity surplues, and the Stiltonista Cheese Mafia are causing trouble for Thursday in her hometown of Swindon. Then things begin to get bad. As Reality Book Shows look set to transplant Reality TV Shows and Goliath invent a trans-fictional tourist coach, 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 . . .

Read more less

The first book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. '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 OutMeet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend.There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's MR Big.Acheron Hades has been kidnapping certain characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again ...

Read more less

The third book in the phenomenal Thursday Next series from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. In the words of one critic: 'Don't ask. Just read it.'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'.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'.

Read more less

The fourth book in the ingenious Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde.'Don't ask, just read it. Fforde is a true original' - Sunday Express on Lost in a Good BookThursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, returns to her native Swindon accompanied by a child of two, a pair of dodos and Hamlet, who is on a fact-finding mission in the real world. Thursday has been despatched to capture escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine but even so, now seems as good a time as any to retrieve her husband Landen from his state of eradication at the hands of the Chronoguard. It's not going to be easy. Thursday's former colleagues at the department of Literary Detectives want her to investigate a spate of cloned Shakespeares, the Goliath Corporation are planning to switch to a new Faith based corporate management system and the Neanderthals feel she might be the Chosen One who will lead them to genetic self-determination. With help from Hamlet, her uncle and time-travelling father, Thursday faces the toughest adventure of her career. Where is the missing President-for-life George Formby? Why is it imperative for the Swindon Mallets to win the World Croquet League final? And why is it so difficult to find reliable childcare?

Read more less

Jasper Fforde, the acclaimed SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER, invites you to imagine a world where your position in society depends on what bit of the colour spectrum you can see... It's the UK, but not as we know it: civilisation has rebuilt after an unspoken 'Something that Happened' five hundred years before. Society is now colour-based, the strict levels of hierarchy dictated by the colours you can see, and the economy, health service and citizen's aspirations all dominated by visual colour, run by the shadowy National Colour in far-off Emerald City. Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, Eddie Russett and Jane Grey have discovered that all is neither fair nor truthful within their cosy environment, and currently face trumped up charges that will see them die of the fatally soporific tones within the Green Room. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, Jane and Edward must find out the truth of their world: What is it, where is it and even when it is. As they unpeel the lies that cloak their existence they come to the worrying conclusion that they may not be alone: That there might be a Somewhere Else beyond the sea, and more, Someone Else living there - and observing them all, purposefully unseen. Red Side Story delves into the strictures of a society imposed on itself by itself, immovable dogma and the spirit of humans trying to love and survive and make sense of a world that makes no sense at all. Only it does, of course - you just have to look harder, look further, and forget everything you've ever been told. 'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett' Independent 'No summaries can do justice to the sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality' The Times 'Brilliantly inventive' Mail on Sunday

Read more less

The final instalment of the Last Dragonslayer Chronicles, demonstrating that with a small band of committed followers, a large tin of resolve and steely determination, almost anything can be achieved . . .Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defence is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination - an ambition that has been four hundred years in the planning and which will ultimately leave the Earth a cold cinder, devoid of all life.Nothing has ever looked so bleak, but Jennifer, assisted by a renegade vegan Troll, a bunch of misfit sorcerers, the Princess (or is she now the ruler?) of the UnUnited (or are they now United?) Kingdoms, and Tiger, must find a way to vanquish the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, and along the way discover the truth about her parents, herself, and what is in the locked glovebox of her VW Beetle . . .

Read more less

Jasper Fforde, the acclaimed SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER, invites you to imagine a world where your position in society depended on what bit of the colour spectrum you could see...It's the UK, but not as we know it: civilisation has rebuilt after an unspoken 'Something that Happened' five hundred years before. Society is now colour-based, the strict levels of hierarchy dictated by the colours you can see, and the economy, health service and citizen's aspirations all dominated by visual colour, run by the shadowy National Colour in far-off Emerald City.Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, Eddie Russett and Jane Grey have discovered that all is neither fair nor truthful within their cosy environment, and currently face trumped up charges that will see them die of the fatally soporific tones within the Green Room.Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, Jane and Edward must find out the truth of their world: What is it, where is it and even when it is. As they unpeel the lies that cloak their existence they come to the worrying conclusion that they may not be alone: That there might be a Somewhere Else beyond the sea, and more, Someone Else living there - and observing them all, purposefully unseen.Red Side Story delves into the strictures of a society imposed on itself by itself, immovable dogma and the spirit of humans trying to love and survive and make sense of a world that makes no sense at all. Only it does, of course - you just have to look harder, look further, and forget everything you've ever been told.'Fforde is one of literature's most enjoyable visionaries, and his long-awaited Shades of Grey sequel will be eagerly seized upon by his admirers... The jokes are excellent, the pacing breathless and the last line a classic' Observer'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett' Independent'No summaries can do justice to the sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality' The Times'Brilliantly inventive' Mail on Sunday

Read more less

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 . . .

Read more less

It's Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.Following the pathologist's careful reconstruction of Humpty's shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary Mary are soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody. As Jack and Mary stumble around the streets of Reading in Jack's Lime Green Austin Allegro, the clues pile up, but Jack has his own problems to deal with.And on top of everything else, the Jellyman is coming to town...

Read more less

The sixth instalment of Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde's sensational Thursday Nextseries. 'Fforde's books are more than just an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of Dickens or Pratchett' - IndependentIt is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister?All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worth of her illustrious namesake. The written Thursday is soon hot on the trail of her factual alter-ego, and quickly stumbles upon a plot so fiendish that it threatens the very BookWorld itself.

Read more less

The Mighty Shandar, the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, returns to the Ununited Kingdoms. Clearly, he didn't solve the Dragon Problem, and must return his fee: eighteen dray-weights of gold. But the Mighty Shandar doesn't do refunds, and vows to eliminate the dragons - unless sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekicks from the Kazam house of enchantment can bring him the legendary jewel, The Eye of Zoltar.The only thing that stands in their way is a perilous journey with a 50% Fatality Index - through the Cambrian Empire to the Leviathan Graveyard, at the top of the deadly Cadair Idris mountain. And it's a quest that sees Jennifer fighting not just for her life, but for everything she knows and loves . . .

Read more less

The second book in Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde's phenomenally successful Thursday Next series. 'Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde' - HeraldThursday Next, literary detective and newlywed is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this - but bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible? Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastadon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan.But whose? and why?

Read more less

The final instalment of the Last Dragonslayer Chronicles, demonstrating that with a small band of committed followers, a large tin of resolve and steely determination, almost anything can be achieved . . .Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defence is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination - an ambition that has been four hundred years in the planning and which will ultimately leave the Earth a cold cinder, devoid of all life.Nothing has ever looked so bleak, but Jennifer, assisted by a renegade vegan Troll, a bunch of misfit sorcerers, the Princess (or is she now the ruler?) of the UnUnited (or are they now United?) Kingdoms, and Tiger, must find a way to vanquish the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, and along the way discover the truth about her parents, herself, and what is in the locked glovebox of her VW Beetle . . .

Read more less

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Fforde pours his brilliant imagination into every corner of this world' Daily Mail'Fforde keeps the puns and neologisms coming thick and fast while exploring every facet of his novel's intriguing premise' Financial TimesEvery Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity. Well, not quite. Your name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artefact borne of the sleeping mind. When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling. When you get the dreams too, it's weird. When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity. But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting, ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk. But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you'll be fine.Praise for Jasper Fforde:'Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure' Telegraph'True literary comic genius' Sunday Express'Ingenious' Terry Pratchett

Read more less

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR. THE MOST ORIGINAL BOOK OF 2021'Sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality' The Times***The village of Much Hemlock has always been a right-wing stronghold. British. Solid. Traditional. Then they move in. They're different from everyone else: they have a weird religion, an aggressive vegan agenda, and too many children. They may seem quiet and peace-loving, but who knows where it could lead?They are a family of human-sized rabbits, the result of an inexplicable anthropomorphising event half a century before. With a mass rehoming to Wales for 1.2 million rabbits looming, long-term resident Peter Knox is drawn from his customary spot on the fence and must choose his corner: a cosy job-for-life at the Rabbit Compliant Taskforce, or stand with the rabbits - and weather the full brunt of human savagery.It'll take a rabbit to teach a human humanity . . .PRAISE FOR JASPER FFORDE'The Constant Rabbit is Jasper Fforde's most chilling and realistic book yet' Guardian 'You won't read anything quite like this in 2020 - or beyond that too' CultureFly 'Is there anyone who can write satire quite like Fforde?. . . An astonishingly well-crafted work of social and political satire.' Kirkus 'Fforde presents a milquetoast cog in an absurdly bureaucratic wheel, this time cleverly skewering Brexit, conservative politics, and white supremacy in this surprisingly uplifting tale of one man doing his best, even if it is the bare minimum.' Booklist 'The Constant Rabbit is designed to shake readers out of that complacency: to recognise that merely holding liberal values is not enough to prevent the quickening advance of racism and xenophobia in this country. One must act.' Financial Times 'A serious minded comedy' Mail on Sunday READERS LOVE THE CONSTANT RABBIT'This is Jasper Fforde at his absolute best. Clever, thought-provoking and relevant, whilst maintaining the absurdity that we have come to love Fforde for' 5*'A real classic - the sort of book that will be read in fifty or a hundred years' time' 5*'[Jasper Fforde's] ability to take something relatively normal and turn it on it's head is sublime, ridiculous and so enjoyable! Quirky, funny, satirical tale with pertinent reflections on current times.' 5*'This book couldn't have come at a better time. Frighteningly poignant given the state of world. It's a truly wonderful piece of work

Read more less

Imagine a black and white world where colour is a commodity . . .Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place.Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey ...If George Orwell had tripped over a paint pot or Douglas Adams favoured colour swatches instead of towels, neither of them would have come up with anything as eccentrically brilliant as Shades of Grey.

Read more less

The Gingerbreadman - psychopath, sadist, convicted murderer and cake/biscuit - is loose on the streets of Reading. It isn't Jack Spratt's case. Despite the success of the Humpty Dumpty investigation, the well publicised failure to prevent Red Riding-Hood and her Gran being eaten once again plunges the Nursery Crime Division into controversy. Enforced non-involvement with the Gingerbreadman hunt looks to be frustrating until a chance encounter at the oddly familiar Deja-Vu Club leads them onto the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta 'Goldy' Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Toad. The last witnesses to see her alive were The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen's wood. But all is not what it seems. Are the unexplained explosions around the globe somehow related to missing nuclear scientist Angus McGuffin? Is cucumber-growing really that dangerous? Why are National Security involved? But most important of all: How could the bears' porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time?

Read more less

The long-awaited follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Shades of Grey—in an EXCLUSIVE EDITION for North American readers, complete with a never-before-published short story“Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett.” —The IndependentWelcome to Chromatacia, where life is strictly regulated by one’s limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years before. Society is now color vision–segregated, everything dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and governed by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City.   Twenty-year-old Eddie Russett, a Red, is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty certain to be sent on a one-wa

Read more less

A long time ago Magic faded away, leaving behind only yo-yos, the extremely useful compass-pointing-to-North enchantment and the spell that keeps bicycles from falling over.Things are about to change. Magical power is on the rise and King Snodd IV of Hereford has realised that he who controls Magic controls almost anything. Only one person stands between Snodd and his plans for unimaginable power and riches.Meet Jennifer Strange, sixteen-year-old acting manager of Kazam, the employment agency for sorcerers and soothsayers. She may only have one functioning Wizard and her faithful assistant 'Tiger' Prawns to help her. But one thing is certain: she will not relinquish the noble powers of Magic to big business and commerce without a fight.

Read more less