The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is “great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy” ( The Washington Post Book World ). “Delightful . . . the well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless.”— People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Miss Marple.”— The Denver Post   With the 923rd Annual Bookworld Awards just around the corner and an unknown villain wreaking havoc in Jurisfiction, what could possibly be next for Detective Thursday Next?   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unreadable Caversham Heights , a cliché-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside?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 grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like Caversham Heights —are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe—least of all Thursday.   Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT “The well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless in the delightful third instalment of his Thursday Next series . . . [W]hat keeps this series humming is Fforde’s lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he’s created to defend them.” — People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Miss Marple.” — The Denver Post “Fforde has created a legion of fans with work that moves beyond clever into the realm of the creatively twisted, a space sparsely inhabited by those who can both envision and portray a skewed world . . . . The Well of Lost Plots reads nicely as a stand-alone and avoids the serious misstep of being a retread of its predecessors.” — The Denver Post “Fforde’s inventiveness remains a bookworm’s delight.” —Entertainment Weekly “Marvelous creations like syntax-slaughtering grammasites and the murderous Minotaur roam this unusual novel’s pages, and Fforde’s fictional epigraphs, like his minihistory of ‘book operating systems,’ are worth the cover price in themselves. Fforde’s sidesplitting sendup of an increasingly antibookish society is a sheer joy.” —Publishers Weekly “Great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy . . . My favorite in the series so far.” — The Washington Post Book World “Murderously fun . . . . A delightful, satirical frolic through literature . . . . Unique and wildly entertaining.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Charles Dickens was one of the British Isles’ most popular novelists, and Jasper Fforde is winging into a similar stature on his Victorian coattails . . . You don’t need to have read either of Fforde’s first two books . . . to keep up with much of the action in The Well of Lost Plots . But why wouldn’t you?” — The Oregonian (Portland) “Even more fun than its predecessors.” — Orlando Sentinel “Like Alice down the rabbit hole, a reader of Fforde’s books falls into a crazy and often quite funny world, where satire meets silliness. Once again, this author’s imagination seems to know no bounds.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Fforde’s bibliophile japery is in the school of Douglas Adams—think of it as a hitchhiker’s guide to the library.” — The Guardian (London) “Bibliophiles will find . . .  The Well of Lost Plots a hoot . . . Exceptionally clever.” — The Rake “Fforde has settled comfortably into series mode, producing another fun romp in an alternate universe where books are more real than reality.” — Library Journal Jasper Fforde  spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the  New York Times  bestseller list with  The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series. He is also the author of  Early Riser and  The Constant Rabbit;  the Nursery Crime Adventures series; the Shades of Grey series; and the Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television as a movie. He lives in Wales. The Well of Lost Plots By Jasper Fforde Penguin Books Copyright ©2004 Jasper Fforde All right reserved. ISBN: 0143034359 Chapter One The Absence of Breakfast The Well of Lost Plots. To understand the Well you have to have an idea of the layout of the Great Library. The library is where all published fiction is stored so it can be read by the readers in the Outland; there are twenty-six floors, one for each letter