The Eyre Affair (2001) | Lost In A Good Book (2002) | The Well Of Lost Plots (2003) | Something Rotten (2004)
The Big Over Easy (2005) | The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco (2006) | The Fourth Bear (2006) | First Among Sequels (2007)
Shades Of Grey (2009) | The Last Dragonslayer (2010) | One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing (2011)

"Jurisfiction session number 40320, item seven -- The had had and that that problem [...] in David Copperfield [...]. Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example [....] You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not."

My sister Sue got me started on these books. Thank god. I think I had heard of The Eyre Affair when it came out -- a book about a law enforcement unit in charge of policing literature -- but of course I never got around to checking it out. Knowing I shared her love of Douglas Adams and literature, she gave me the Thursday Next series for Christmas; I finished reading them three days later.

Fforde is a wordsmith and linguistic gymnast who definitely could be filed alongside Adams and Terry Pratchet, thought it would be selling him short to think of him as a knock off of either. While a deep knowledge of literature isn't specifically required, familiarity with classics like Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Richard III, Hamlet, Alice In Wonderland and Sense and Sensibility definitely adds to the enjoyment of the series. [You could also include The Stars My Destination, Beatrix Potter, all of Lewis Carroll, all of Shakespeare, westerns, b-grade science fiction, hard boiled detective novels, Mill On The Floss, the Mr. Toad books, nursery rhymes, and David Copperfield to that list. And other things I'm either forgetting or didn't catch.]

It's worth noting that none of his books has a Chapter 13.

The Eyre Affair (2001)		In this novel Thursday is actually in Special Operations Unit 27 (SpecOps-27), the literary division of law enforcement. In the world of these novels literature is a commodity valued in such a way that there exists an entire criminal element devoted to forging, stealing and traffic-ing first editions, manuscripts, and rare books. Someone is removing characters from literature thereby changing the classics -- it's Thursday's job to find out who and why. Most of the major players in the series are introduced: Next's non-existant father (he is a rogue time-traveling ex-cop whose existence was erased), her long dead brother Anton, Swindon (that would be the town, not a person but it's pretty much a character here), her inventor uncle Mycroft, the Crimean war, her arch-nemesises the Hades family, the Goliath Corporation (the evil multinational conglomerate bent on controlling the world), Goliath flunky Jack Schitt, her pet dodo Pickwick, and her lifelong love Landen.
Lost In A Good Book (2002)		Landen is eradicated by a time traveling cop with an axe to grind, leaving Thursday pregnant by a man who never existed. To restore her husband Next leaves SpecOps to work for Jursifiction, the law enforcement agency that exists inside of literature. Their mandate is to keep order in the world of books where characters routinely try to alter story lines and jump to more exciting books, where words are threatened by mispeling vyruses and grammercites , where one must obtain special dispensation to use "had had", "that that" and ignore the "i before e" rule . Thursday becomes the apprentice to Miss Haversham and discovers why the works of Poe are off-limits to Jurisfiction agents...
The Well Of Lost Plots (2003)		In which our heroine moves to the Bookworld to escape the Goliath Corporation and becomes a substitute for a vacationing minor character in a z-grade detective novel called Caversham Heights. A series of mysterious deaths point to a conspiracy inside Jursifiction with possible links to the Outland (the non-book world).
Something Rotten (2004)		Thursday comes back to the Outland to face Goliath and get her husband restored. A 13th century seer materializes to give voice to his prophesies, which have an uncanny knack for coming true. Hamlet has an affair with the wife of Admiral Lord Nelson while The Merry Wives of Windsor takes over his play. The fate of the world hinges on the outcome of a croquet match. Among other things. This book more or less wraps up the threads of the first three novels while it becomes self-aware as a book.
The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco (2006)		no longer available
First Among Sequels (2007)		Picking up on the metafictional seeds in Rotten, Thursday has been assigned a troublesome apprentice: Thursday Next from the fictional series of Thursday Next novels.
One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing (2011)		The next Tuesday Next book promised for early 2011.

The Big Over Easy (2005)		At the conclusion of The Well Of Lost Plots, Thursday Next creates a reserve for nursery rhyme characters in an altered version of the Caversham Heights novel -- this is the result. Jack Spratt is a detective working the Nursery Crime division with his partner Mary Mary; Humpty Dumpty is dead and there appears to be more to the case than an unbalanced ovum.
The Fourth Bear (2006)		Spratt investigates the Three Bears. Evidence suggests the presence of a mysterious fourth bear at the scene of the crime and Spratt is on the case.

Shades Of Grey 1: The Road To High Saffron (2009)		This takes place on a future Earth in which people are segregated by the amounts of color they can see (Greens, Reds, Yellows, Blues, Violets, Oranges and Greys), spoons are highly prized possessions, Model T's are the transport of choice and falling in love outside of your color (or a complimentary color) is forbidden. So of course it happens to the main character. Fforde unfolds a bizarre and perplexing murder case in a bizarre yet strangely familiar world.

The Last Dragonslayer (2010)		A young reader book about a 15 year old girl who manages a small sorcery company which, due to the waining power of magic, primarily does things like unclog drains and find lost car keys. Of course, she's meant for greatness and soon finds herself heir to a line of dragonslayers. Like a young Tuesday Next, Jennifer Strange is smart, resourceful and wildly appealing. Fforde tempers some of his verbal and referential flights of fancy here, but it's a good read. It will be interesting if this creates a gateway for young readers to move into his other novels.