UK paperback	US hardcover	OZ paperback

The second book of the fantastical Thursday Next series was released in August 2002 in the UK and March 2003 in the US.

Synopsis:
UK Book Blurb:

All life on earth was due to end in a month but I had more pressing matters to attend to. My husband didn't exist and unless I did something about it very soon, he might remain that way for ever.

Thursday Next, literary detective and registered dodo owner begins her married life with the disturbing news that her husband of only a month drowned thirty-eight years ago, and no one but Thursday has any memory of him at all. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. Could it be the ubiquitous Goliath Corporation, who will stop at nothing to get their operative Jack Schitt out of The Raven- the poem in which Thursday trapped him? Or are more sinister forces at work in Swindon?

Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday heads back into fiction to search for some answers. Along the way she finds herself helping Miss Havisham close narrative loopholes in Great Expectations, struggling for a deeper understanding of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and learning the truth about Larry the Lamb. Paper politicians, lost Shakespearean manuscripts, woolly mammoth migrations, a flurry of near-fatal coincidences and impending Armageddon are all part of a greater plan.

But whose? And Why?

US Blurb:

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" has another thing coming.

The love of her life has been eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath, and 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 Miss H's 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 works of Kafka and Austen and even 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 discoverd play by the Bard himself and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

The inventive, exuberant and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Fforde's magnificent new adventure, the second installment in what is sure to become a classic series of literary fantasy.