Excerpt of One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde

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?

But all is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of
Speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, who is
attempting to keep her own small four-book series both
respectful to her illustrious namesake and far from the
grim spectre of being remaindered.

Despite her desire to stay away from the spotlight, written
Thursday is asked by Jurisfiction to investigate a novel
that has suffered an in-read breakup and deposited a
narrative debris-field halfway across the Bookworld. It's
not quite so straightforward: Someone has ground the ISBN
numbers from the wreckage, and all of a sudden the
mysterious Men in Plaid want her dead.

As the hunt for answers takes her from the Council of
Genres to Fan-Fiction and from Comedy to Vanity publishing,
written Thursday realises that Real Thursday had been
investigating a plot fiendish enough to be killed for. But
who is responsible? Only a trip up the Mighty Metaphoric
river and a visit to the hideously frightening Realworld
can provide the answers.

With her clockwork butler Sprockett and her Designated Love
Interest Whitby Jett, Thursday has to get to grips with her
inability to match up to her Namesake's talent, and prove
herself to the one person she respects more than anyone
else: The real her...