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Thursday Next stars in Jasper Fforde‘s comic fantasy, alternate history mysteries. She is the daughter of Colonel Next (whose actual first name has not been revealed)and Wednesday Next. She time travels into different books in her futuristic world, and she is a literary detective.
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Order of Thursday Next Series
| # | Read | Title | Published | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Eyre Affair | 2001 | Description / Buy | |
| 2 | Lost in a Good Book | 2002 | Description / Buy | |
| 3 | The Well of Lost Plots | 2003 | Description / Buy | |
| 4 | Something Rotten | 2004 | Description / Buy | |
| 5 | First Among Sequels | 2007 | Description / Buy | |
| 6 | One of Our Thursdays Is Missing | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
| 7 | The Woman Who Died A Lot | 2012 | Description / Buy | |
| 8 | Dark Reading Matter | 2025 | Description / Buy |
Thursday was introduced in Fforde’s debut novel, which is called “The Eyre Affair” and was released in the year 2001.
BEST THURSDAY NEXT BOOKS
For those readers looking to get into the “Thursday Next” series by Jasper Fforde, this section will help with that. It will go over the novels “The Eyre Affair”, “Lost in a Good Book”, and “The Well of Lost Plots”.
The Eyre Affair: This is the first novel in the “Thursday Next” series and was released in the year 2001. Great Britain, right around the year 1985. Time travel has become routine, and cloning is reality (dodos are the pet that has been chosen to be resurrected), and literature is something taken quite seriously. Baconians are trying to get the world to believe that Francis Bacon is responsible for Shakespeare, and riots break out between Impressionists and Surrealists. At the same time, there are many men who are named after John Milton, which makes it tough on the cops.
With all of this, Acheron Hades (who is the third most wanted man in the entire world) takes Martin Chuzzlewit’s original manuscript and murders a minor character, who disappears from all the volumes of the novel that has ever been printed. That is only the start, though. His actual target is Jane Eyre, and he quickly pulls her from Bronte’s book.
Here comes Thursday Next. She is a prominent literary detective for Special Operative, and drives a Porsche. She has the aid of Mycroft’s (who is her uncle) Prose Portal, and is able to rescue Jane from her literary homicide. It is tough business to pull off, what with all the interlopers going around Thornfield. There are deceptions rampant as paths cross with Miss Fairfax, Jane, and Rochester. Will Thursday be able to save the life of Jane Eyre, and Bronte’s greatest work? What about the Crimean War? Is it ever going to end? Then there are those black holes that keep coming up and pulling things into the time space voids.
Lost in a Good Book: This is the second novel in the “Thursday Next” series and was released in the year 2002. Thursday was way wrong if she thought she could get away from being thrust into the spotlight after her heroic adventures in Jane Eyre’s pages.
Her love has been taken by Goliath, who is everyone’s beloved corrupt multinational. To get him back, Thursday has to get a supposedly dead enemy from “The Raven”. Poe has been deemed off limits even to the literary interlopers that are most talented.
Here comes Miss Havisham, a man hater from “Great Expectations”, she is a professional. Thursday becomes her apprentice, and while keeping motives a secret, starts learning about Jurisfiction. This is where she is able to moonlight, and work as a Prose Resource Operative inside different books. It wasn’t enough jumping into different classic works, she is now the target of some possibly deadly coincidences.
The Well of Lost Plots: This is the third novel in the “Thursday Next” series and was released in the year 2004. Thursday could certainly use some down time at this point as she is quite at her wits end. As well as pregnant. Her job working at Jurisfiction as Miss Havisham’s apprentice is pretty hectic, as usual, and that is not only because it is her job to moderate the anger counseling sessions that happen at Wuthering Heights. Nothing could be more welcome for her at the moment than a stint of rest at the Character Exchange Program deep in the Well of Lost Plots.
She is just supposed to relax while filling in for one of the sidekicks in a detective procedural that is unpublished (not to mention unpublishable) that is deep in the Lost Plots Well. Vacation proves elusive for her, however. Quickly, she realizes that this place is a free for all. Bad books get scrapped for salvage, and plot devices get sold on the black market. And on top of it all, is a killer that stalks the personnel of Jurisfiction, leaving no one safe. Thursday least of all.
OTHER BOOK SERIES YOU MAY LIKE
A must read is the “Discworld” series by Terry Pratchett. This series is a comic fantasy series of books, and is set on Discworld, which is a flat disc that balanced on four elephants’ back that are standing on a giant turtle’s back, who is named Great A’Tuin.
Be sure to check out the “Kathryn Ardleigh” series by Robin Page as well. This series features two amateur detectives, named Sir Charles Sheridan and Kate Ardleigh Sheridan. They go about, meeting notable figures of the time period and solving an important mystery.
What Is The Next Book in The Thursday Next Series?
The next book in the The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde is Dark Reading Matter and will be released on November, 4th 2025.