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Lost in a Good Book

A Thursday Next Novel
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Lost in a Good Book follows Thursday Next, a tenacious literary detective thrust back into action after the love of her life is erased by the sinister Goliath Corporation. As a Prose Resource Operative within the secret police of Jurisfiction, Thursday learns to navigate the world inside books, apprenticed to Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations. Her mission spans from rescuing foes in Poe's "The Raven" to delving into Kafka, Austen, and even Beatrix Potter, all while foiling a threat that could engulf Earth in a mysterious pink sludge. This inventive tale blends satire, fantasy, literary criticism, and thriller elements in an unmissable sequel to the acclaimed The Eyre Affair.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$6000

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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book suits readers who love clever, genre-blending stories filled with literary references, puzzles, and humour. Fans of detective fiction, fantasy, and metafiction will particularly enjoy Thursday Next’s adventures through classic literature.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with "The Eyre Affair" continues with Fforde's magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Constant Rabbit comes “Harry Potter just for adults . . . [an] immensely enjoyable, almost compulsive experience” (The New York Times Book Review)—the second novel in the renowned Thursday Next series.

Lost in a Good Book is satire, fantasy, literary criticism, thriller, whodunit, game, puzzle, joke, postmodern prank, and tilt-a-whirl.”—The Washington Post

If resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next thought she could avoid the spotlight after her heroic escapades in the pages of Jane Eyre, she was sorely mistaken.

Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside the books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens’s Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro.

If Thursday retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe’s “The Raven,” she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels:
THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT

Series: A Thursday Next Novel

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  • Lost in a Good Book
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Constant Rabbit comes “Harry Potter just for adults . . . [an] immensely enjoyable, almost compulsive experience” (The New York Times Book Review)—the second novel in the renowned Thursday Next series. “Lost in a Good Book is satire, fantasy, literary criticism, thriller, whodunit, game, puzzle, joke, postmodern prank, and tilt-a-whirl.”—The...
    Paperback
    $6000
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • The Well of Lost Plots
    The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is “great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy” (The Washington Post Book World). “Delightful . . . the well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless.”—People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty...
    Paperback
    $6400
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780142004036

Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 24 February 2004

Country: United States

Imprint: Penguin USA

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 24.0mm

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 195.0mm

Weight: 323g

Pages: 416

About the Author

Jasper Fforde spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Times bestseller list with The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series. He is also the author of Early Riser and The Constant Rabbit; the Nursery Crime Adventures series; the Shades of Grey series; and the Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television as a movie. He lives in Wales.

Also by Jasper Fforde

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  • The Eyre Affair
    There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits, and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. In this world, there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, and a great interest in all things literary...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • The Great Troll War
    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....
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  • Shades of Grey
    ‘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 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...
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  • One of our Thursdays is Missing
    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. 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...
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  • Red Side Story
    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...
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  • The Last Dragonslayer
    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...
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  • Pre-order
    Dark Reading Matter
    The final novel in the highly acclaimed and beloved Thursday Next series. Will Thursday find her happy ending? The Dark Reading Matter is a theoretical realm that suggests that the observable bookverse can only account for 20% of the calculated total readable mass. Out there somewhere, possibly, is a larger and more expansive and unseeable 'Dark Bookverse' that contains millions...
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    Out 13 Oct 2026
  • The Constant Rabbit
    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...
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  • Jeeves Again
    A joyful collection of twelve short stories inspired by Jeeves and Wooster, featuring Frank Skinner, Roddy Doyle, Alan Titchmarsh and many more. 'Full of fizz and variety' - Sunday Times 'Jolly good fun' - i Paper 'Whip-smart' - Daily Mail 'Fun and frolics for the festive season' - Saga Magazine Featuring huge names from literature, comedy and beyond - including...
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    $4500
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  • The Big Over Easy
    Welcome to the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. From the New York Times bestselling author of the Thursday Next series comes a rollicking novel—“as if the Marx brothers were let loose in the children’s section of a strange bookstore” (USA Today). “A wonderfully readable riot . . . cleverly plotted, magically overstuffed yet amazingly digestible . . . [for] anyone...
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  • The Well of Lost Plots
    The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is “great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy” (The Washington Post Book World). “Delightful . . . the well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless.”—People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty...
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  • Early Riser
    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 Times Every Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and...
    Paperback
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