Pre-Pub Book Buzz: One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

Thursday Next is back! Yes, that's right! Jasper Fforde's latest installment in the Thursday Next series is finally here and due out on shelves on March 8. And he's coming to Denver! Whoo hoo! All these exclamation points -- can't you tell that I'm excited. Fforde, by the way, is absolutely hilarious in person, so if you have a chance to go to one of his signings, do not let it pass you by.

So, here's a little about One of Our Thursdays is Missing from the publisher:

Once again, The New York Times bestselling author has a field day, gleefully bending satire, romance, and thriller with literary allusions galore. Fforde transports readers into a fantastic adventure through the landscape of a frisky and fertile imagination.

It is a time of unrest in the Bookworld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. However, 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 lost however. Living at the quiet end of Speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, who is attempting to keep her own small four-book series both respectful to her illustrious namesake and far from the grim spectre of being remaindered.

Despite her desire to stay away from the spotlight, written Thursday is asked by Jurisfiction to investigate a novel that has suffered an in-read breakup and deposited a narrative debris-field halfway across the Bookworld. It is not quite so straightforward: Someone has ground the ISBN numbers from the wreckage, and all of a sudden, the mysterious Men in Plaid want her dead.

As the hunt for answers takes her from the Council of Genres to Fan-Fiction and from Comedy to Vanity publishing, written Thursday realizes that Real Thursday had been investigating a plot fiendish enough to be killed for. But who is responsible?

Only a trip up the Mighty Metaphoric River and a visit to the hideously frightening Realworld can provide the answers.

With her clockwork butler Sprockett and her Designated Love Interest Whitby Jett, Thursday has to get grips with her inability to match up to her Namesake’s talent, and prove herself to the one person she respects more than anyone else: The real her…

Fans, or Ffans as we like to call them, will rejoice that their favorite character in the Fforde universe is back.

Yay! Now for all you out there who may not have read this series yet, you do have to read them in order. They are:

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

I suggest you go out and make your local bookstore very happy and buy them all -- or you can buy just the first two. And yes, you have to buy the first two -- I have to admit that even for a fan, Eyre Affair is so completely unlike anything else out there. You have to get into the Fforde groove, but then you won't want to stop, so you might as well buy the set : )