Welcome to the Jasper Fforde Website

Hello! If you are completely new to my writing, I have several series all running in parallel. They are:

1: The Thursday Next series. Thursday Next is a detective who works for Jurisfiction, the policing agency that works inside fiction. The books are set in an odd alternative world, and blends SF, Fantasy, Literature, Horror, and a bit of romance. This is how I recently described the series:

They are a series of books based upon the notion that what we read in books is just a small part of a larger BookWorld that exists behind the page.

A fantastical place populated by off-duty and sometimes mischievous bookpeople from the Classics to Fanfiction, and ruled over by the wheezing bureaucracy known as The council of Genres. It is their task to maintain the pageant and integrity of the books within their charge, and these efforts are sometimes thwarted by the very evildoers and bizarre plot devices that give the Bookworld its appeal.

Aided in this endeavour but sometimes disagreeing with them are Jurisfiction, the policing agency within Fiction. The adventures follow one of their operatives: A woman from the Realworld named Thursday Next, whose reality-based credentials bring a dimension of independent thought to the proceedings, something that is often absent in the mostly predetermined Bookworld.

Confused? Excellent - turn to page one and start reading!

(Six books so far: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of our Thursdays is Missing)

2: The Nursery Crime series. DCI Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary work for the Nursery Crime Division in Reading, investigating crimes within the world of nursery rhymes. In the first, The Big Over Easy, they investigate the apparent suicide of Humpty Dumpty, and in the The Fourth Bear, they look at the events surrounding the mysterious death of Goldilocks. Both books are fundamentally whodunnits, but also manage to blend absurdity with satire, and have fun at the very tired genre from which they hail. (Two books so far, a third due probably 2014)

3: The Shades of Grey series. Set in the long distant future in a society dominated in every way by visual colour, Shades of Grey is the adventures of one Eddie Russett, an unambitious red who moves to East Carmine, a small village right on the edge of Red Zone West. The colour you can see dictates your social position, and the collection of scrap pigment to be refined into glorious 'univisual' shades seems to be the primary goal of the society. But perhaps there is more to the fixed and intransigent world in which Eddie finds himself, and when he meets Jane Grey, his worst suspicions are realised. Part comedy, part social satire (imagine Eton run by the Khmer Rouge) Shades is probably my most ambitious work to date. (One book so far; Book two due in 2013.)

4: The Last Dragonslayer series. Jennifer Strange is a 15-year-old foundling who has been sold into indentured servitude to Kazam, a House of Enchantment run by The Great Zambini. Trouble is, Zambini has vanished, leaving Jennifer to deal with the thirty-eight barely sane sorcerers at the creaky Zambini Towers. The death of a dragon is foretold, and a four hundred year old spell starts to unfold in front of her. Does the last dragon have to die? And whu has she been chosen to be the Last Dragonslayer? The series is aimed at young adults and is intended to be an antidote to the more serious books about wizards and trolls. In LDS, magic is very hit and miss, and the wizards who can do it are a motley bunch that need all Jennifer's skills to keep them focussed. Part one of a trilogy, book two is due out in 2011.

The best place to start? If you like a challenge, Shades of Grey. The Fourth Bear is just a good silly simple read that is a good Fforde primer so you can figure out how my books work, or you can leap into the Thursday books if you like your fantasy spread thick, deep, and silly.

You can find some shortened precis by clicking HERE to see if it's your bag.