The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next Series #3) » (~)

A former Hollywood film exec, Jasper Fforde has switched from the silver screen to the page, earning a reputation as a "grown up J. K. Rowling" with his literary fantasies The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book.

When soon-to-be single parent Thursday Next emerges from her comfortable life inside an unpublished book, she steps into a new age of fictional narrative. The entire book world is abuzz with anticipation of an improved Text Operating System that moves from the 8-plot to the new 32-plot story system. But danger lurks when Jurisfiction agents keep turning up dead. When Thursday steps in, she eincounters Dickens' Miss Havisham, passes through Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and deals with a mispeling vyrus, holesmiths, and unionized nursery rhymes. THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS---the place where all fiction is created---is an exhilarating romp through literary classics, an insightful look into how books are made, anda jewel in the long tradition of British nonsense.

The Washington Post

It's a little difficult to describe the Thursday Next novels without making them sound precious and twee. In fact, they are somewhat precious and twee, but also great fun -- especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy in the tradition of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, Norton Juster and Lewis Carroll. Indeed, one of the pleasures in reading the three installments of the adventures of Thursday Next lies in recognizing the myriad bookish allusions, some obvious, some very sly indeed. — Michael Dirda