There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. But in this world there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic - and a woman called Thursday Next.

Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. After two rollicking New York Times-bestselling adventures through the Western literary canon, Britain's Prose Resource Operative was literally and literaturally at her wit's end -- not to mention pregnant. So what could be more welcome than a restful stint in the Character Exchange Program down in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots? But a vacation remains elusive. In no time, Thursday discovers...

Fourteen years after the 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday finds herself entangled in cases involving the murders of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple before receiving a death threat of her own.

The Bookworld's leading enforcement officer, Thursday Next, has been forced into a semiretirement following an assassination attempt, returning home to Swindon and her family to recuperate. But Thursday's children have problems that demand she become a mother of invention: Friday's career struggles in the Chronoguard, where he is relegated to a might-have-been; Tuesday's trouble perfecting the Anti-Smote shield, needed in time to thwart an angry Deity's...