Lost in a Good Book
Jasper Fforde
Penguin Books
<span>If Thursday thought she
 could avoid the spotlight after her heroic escapades in the pages of 
Jane Eyre, she was sorely mistaken. The unforgettable literary detective
 whom Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times calls "part Bridget Jones, 
part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry" had another think coming. The love
 of her life has been eradicated by Goliath, everyone's favorite corrupt
 multinational. To rescue him Thursday must retrieve a supposedly 
vanquished enemy from the pages of "The Raven." But Poe is off-limits to
 even the most seasoned literary interloper. Enter a professional: the 
man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations. As her new 
apprentice, Thursday keeps her motives secret as she learns the ropes of
 Jurisfiction, where she moonlights as a Prose Resource Operative inside
 books. As if jumping into the likes of Kafka, Austen, and Beatrix 
Potter's Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies weren't enough, Thursday finds 
herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the 
authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the 
only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing 
all life on Earth.</span>