The Alternate Worlds of Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British writer known for his five novels about Thursday Next, literary detective, and the Nursery Crimes series.
Thursday Next lives in an alternate England circa 1985. It's a world where airships rule the skies, extinct animals have been cloned (Thursday has a pet dodo, Pickwick), and people can read themselves into books, which is how Thursday manages to save a great novel in The Eyre Affair.
The Nursery Crimes series features Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary of the Reading Police Department. In The Big Over Easy they are called on to find out who did in Humpty Dumpty. In The Fourth Bear they're on the hunt for missing journalist Goldie Hatchett, last seen by three bears who like their porridge hot, cold, and just right. Meanwhile there's a crazed Gingerbreadman on the loose.
"Fforde is above all funny. His self-styled 'daft novels' are not for the lazy brained but for the actively engaged reader, one who knows the secret pleasures of a word puzzle and can draw on a lifetime of literature." - USA Today
He was born in London on January 11, 1961 and lives in Wales.
The photo of Jasper Forde getting the point while he makes one was taken by me at Powell's Books in Beaverton, OR, July 2007.
Shades of Grey
Available for pre-order
Shades of Grey: A Novel
Amazon Price: $17.13 (as of 12/26/2009)
Eddie Russet belongs to the House of Red and can see his own color, but everything else is just shades of grey and must be colorized by artificial means. Nobody talks about it, but there's evidence there was a disaster many years ago that brought about this condition. Now, news is sporadic, technology is poor, everyone is afraid of change. Even more, they're terrified of the nighttime, when nobody can see.
Still, Eddie might've gone along in life just fine, until he meets and falls for Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark side of town. She shows him a different way of looking at his world, and in that world, that's dangerous. Shades of Grey combines satire, romance, and revolutionary thriller action while taking pokes at our own society. Both wilder and darker than Fforde's Thursday Next novels, it once again puts his hugely inventive imagination on display.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: Shades of Grey
Thursday Next Novels
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
From the Dust Jacket of the hardcover edition:
Fourteen years after she pegged out at the 1988 Super Hoop (in Something Rotten), Thursday Next is grappling with a host of new problems in the Book World: 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.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (Thursday Next Novels (Penguin Books))
Amazon Price: (as of 12/26/2009)
Something Rotten (Thursday Next Novels)
From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition:
Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap - as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon's patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn't bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: Something Rotten (library/collector's edition)
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next Series)
From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition:
Protecting the world's greatest literature - not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham - is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliche-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammarsites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books - like Caversham Heights - are scrapped for salvage.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: The Well of Lost Plots (Limited Collector's Edition)
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/26/2009)
Lost in a Good Book (A Thursday Next Novel)
From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition:
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 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.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next Novels (Penguin Books))
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel
From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition:
Welcome to the surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. when Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next)
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/26/2009)
Thursday Next Audiobooks
First Among Sequels (Thursday Next Novels)
Amazon Price: $26.59 (as of 12/26/2009)
Something Rotten (Thursday Next Novels)
Order the audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: Something Rotten (Thursday Next)
Amazon Price: $24.40 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next Novels)
Order the audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: The Well of Lost Plots
Amazon Price: $26.97 (as of 12/26/2009)
Lost in a Good Book
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next)
Amazon Price: $24.39 (as of 12/26/2009)
Eyre Affair: CD
Order the audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next)
Order audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next)
Amazon Price: $28.08 (as of 12/26/2009)
Nursery Crimes Novels - Print & Audio
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime
From the Dust Jacket of the hardcover edition:
The Gingerbreadman - psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murerer and cookie - is loose in the streets of Reading. But Jack Spratt doesn't get the case. He and Mary Mary have been demoted to Missing Persons because of Jack's poor judgment involving the poisoning of Mr. Bun the baker. Missing persons looks like a boring assignment until a chance encounter at the oddly familiar Deja Vu Hotel leads the pair into the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta "Goldy" Hatchett, star reporter for The Mole. The last witnesses to see her alive were the three bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Anderson's Wood.
But all is not as it seems. How could the bears' porridge be at such disparate temperatures when it was poured at the same time? Was there a fourth bear? And if there was, who was he, and why did he try to disguise Goldy's death as a freak accident?
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: The Fourth Bear (Nursery Crime Adventures 2)
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime
Audio CD
Order the audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: The Fourth Bear (Nursery Crime Adventures 2)
Amazon Price: $26.80 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime
From the back cover of the Penguin Books edition:
Welcome to the seedy underbelly of nursery crime ... Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of Reading's Nursery Crime Division. He's investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, ex-convict and lover of women, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those little pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play. Spratt and his new partner, Sergeant Mary Mary, search through Humpty's sordid past in hopes of finding the key to his death.
Order the book from Amazon.co.uk: The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime Adventures 1)
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/26/2009)
The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime
Audio CD
Order the audiobook from Amazon.co.uk: The Big Over-easy (Nursery Crime Adventures 1)
Amazon Price: $21.86 (as of 12/26/2009)
Jasper Fforde Videos
Jasper Fforde on Flickr
jasper fforde
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20070731_MG_7963.jpg
20070731_MG_7965.jpg
The big over easy
Jasper Fforde
Links to Jasper Fforde
- Jasperfforde.com : Homepage
- Homepage and entry into the jasperfforde.com website
- Jasper Fforde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Jasper Fforde's entry on Wikipedia
- SF authors and awards lenses by Mobyd
- A lens listing lenses I've made for science fiction authors and the winners and nominees of the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Leave a Comment about Jasper Fforde
Share your stories, sightings, thoughts, rants, raves...
Don't forget to bookmark and rate this lens! You can do that following the comments.
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Reply
- SloTownGal SloTownGal Jul 27, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
- Reading The Eyre Affair right now, and enjoying it immensely. Thanks for a great lens.
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Reply
- MobyD MobyD Jan 14, 2009 @ 6:46 am | in reply to CDT
- Dare to be daft!
Thanks for accepting this lens into the Brit Lit Group.
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Reply
- CDT CDT Jan 14, 2009 @ 6:22 am
- Oh no...another intriguing sounding author I've discovered thanks to Squidoo...too many great books, not enough time :)
Seriously, Mr Fforde is another one I've put on my list of "authors to explore", cos he sounds right up my street :D
5*
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- Kanga Kanga May 30, 2008 @ 7:42 am
- Great lens! I can't believe I've never thought of looking him up on YouTube! 5 stars :-)
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