#thursday next

[book--brackets]

The Scholomance by Naomi Novik (2020-2022)

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull (2006-2010)

For centuries, mystical creatures of all description were gathered to a hidden refuge called Fablehaven to prevent their extinction. The sanctuary is one of the last strongholds of true magic. Enchanting? Absolutely. Exciting? You bet. Safe? Well, actually, quite the opposite...

 Kendra and her brother, Seth, have no idea their grandfather is the current caretaker of Fablehaven. Inside the gated woods, ancient laws keep order among greedy trolls, mischievous satyrs, plotting witches, spiteful imps, and jealous fairies. However, when the rules get broken, powerful forces of evil are unleashed, forcing Kendra and Seth to face the greatest challenge of their lives, to save their family, Fablehaven, and perhaps even the world.

Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan (2004-2011)

They have always scared him in the past--the Rangers, with their dark cloaksand shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger's apprentice. What he doesn't yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied. . . . 

Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Geir (2009-2010)

Sixteen-year-old Gwen lives with her extended - and rather eccentric - family in an exclusive London neighborhood. In spite of her ancestors' peculiar history, she's had a relatively normal life so far. The time-traveling gene that runs like a secret thread through the female half of the family is supposed to have skipped over Gwen, so she hasn't been introduced to "the mysteries," and can spend her time hanging out with her best friend, Lesley. It comes as an unwelcome surprise when she starts taking sudden, uncontrolled leaps into the past.

She's totally unprepared for time travel, not to mention all that comes with it: fancy clothes, archaic manners, a mysterious secret society, and Gideon, her time-traveling counterpart. He's obnoxious, a know-it-all, and possibly the best-looking guy she's seen in any century...

The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale (2003-2009)

She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste.

Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins (2010-2013)

Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father—an elusive European warlock—only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters. 

By the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tag-along ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire student on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect. 

As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.

Fables by Bill Willingham (2002-2015)

When a savage creature known only as the Adversary conquered the fabled lands of legends and fairy tales, all of the infamous inhabitants of folklore were forced into exile. Disguised among the ""mundys,"" their name for normal citizens of modern-day New York, these magical characters created their own secret society that they call Fabletown.

From their exclusive luxury apartment buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side, these creatures of legend must fight for their survival in the new world.

Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey (1968-2018)

On a beautiful world called Pern, an ancient way of life is about to come under attack from a myth that is all too real. Lessa is an outcast survivor--her parents murdered, her birthright stolen--a strong young woman who has never stopped dreaming of revenge. But when an ancient threat to Pern reemerges, Lessa will rise--upon the back of a great dragon with whom she shares a telepathic bond more intimate than any human connection. Together, dragon and rider will fly . . . and Pern will be changed forever.

Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde (2001-present)

England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bront 's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career.

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir (2019-present)

The Emperor needs necromancers.

The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will be become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.

[pegasusdrawnchariots]

fave female characters poll! 💃

Thank u for the tag ms @oatflatwhite 🍸

Rules: make a poll of your favourite female characters (no limits — as many or as few as you want) and see which your followers like the most!

Tagging: @ninadove, @justbecringe, @pixelated-glitter, @clareguilty, @jules-and-company,

@swamp--girl, @dying-suffering-french-stalkers, & whoever else wants to play/create their own! Tag me so I can vote too ^_^

[spaceswordblaster]

*some of these women are in fact teenage girls because idk

Tagged by @i-chew-on-pushpins

Tagging anyone who wants to do it!

[the-forest-library]

New Thursday Next Book Dropping June 3, 2025!

After over twelve years, fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series are getting a new book in the series…and it’s the last one. Dark Reading Matter is to be the eighth and final book in the delightful sci-fi series about Thursday Next, a literary detective. Not much is known about the book right now, except the publisher description mentions that the plot was teased in the last book.

[bourbon-ontherocks]

@sothischickshe I'm sorry it took me -- checks calendar -- almost two months to reply to this (life etc) but omg what???? I bullied you for literal YEARS, begging you to read the Thursday Next series, and NO I'm pretty sure we never discussed this at all because I would remember you telling me you finally read these books, and that's how you break the news to me?? In a fucking post note??? Ages later??? Seriously Heatherwax, what the hell??

...

Breathe, Julia, Breathe.

Okay. I'm sorry that I yelled, Patrick Heatherwax, but please do tell me alllllll your thoughts on the Thursday Next saga (and also other Jasper Fforde books if you feel like it) 😘

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[pargery]

The atmosphere was so thick with dramatic cliches, you could have cut it with a knife.

--"The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde

[vaguelysaunteringdown]

I am Diogenes (just me) in search (looking through tumbler tags) of a honest man (I’m just trying to find the Thursday Next fandom)

[friendly-neighbourhood-librarian]

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

It's hard to describe this book but it was a lot of fun!

In an alternate universe that's a lot like ours but also a lot different, a literary detective named Thursday Next is on the case of an inexplicably super-powered mass murderer who is kidnapping fictional characters out of books. When he holds Jane Eyre hostage, Thursday sets out to rescue her and also possibly fix the ending of her story while she's at it.

Also includes:

Dodo birds

Time travel

Literal bookworms

Vampires and werewolves

Secret government agencies

Evil Mega Corporation

More time travel

Many other zany things I can't remember

Thursday Next series: 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

More bookish books

[bracketsoffear]

Felidae (Akif Pirinçci) "Francis is a cat who has moved with his owner to a city in Germany. There, he comes across a mystery involving the murders of several neighborhood cats. Think Warriors, but it is a murder mystery written for adults. It has a lot of Slaughter and Hunt going on, but the killer's motives and backstory would honestly make him a prime Avatar for the Extinction."

SPOILERS BELOW CUT

Thursday Next (Jasper Fforde) "Thursday Next lives in an Alternate History. In her world, Time Travel, cloning and genetic engineering are commonplace; resurrected dodos are the household pet of choice. The obscenely powerful Goliath Corporation, which nearly singlehandedly reconstructed England after World War II, now runs the country as a virtual police state. And literature, particularly classic literature, is very, very, very Serious Business. Writers are revered with nearly spiritual devotion, controversial claims about books and authors can be criminal, and an entire police squad, the LiteraTecs, exist to keep the literary scene in order. Thursday works for just such a unit in Swindon, with her friend and colleague, the exceedingly polite Bowden Cable.

In the course of rescuing her Gadgeteer Genius uncle Mycroft from international arch-criminal Acheron Hades, a gleefully evil individual with supernatural powers, Thursday discovers the Great Library, a sort of pocket dimension that exists 'behind the scenes' of all works of literature, where all literary characters live. They're self-aware, acting out their roles when a person reads a book but chilling out and living their own lives as soon as they close it. The Great Library is governed by the Council of Genres and kept in line by Jurisfiction, another police force whose task it is to make sure the plot of every book stays the same every time someone reads it. (Insofar as they can.)

Such is the universe of Jasper Fforde's meta-fictional masterpiece, the Thursday Next series. The author hangs a lampshade on everything and anything relating to classic literature, the tropes of police fiction and spy fiction, and even the relationship between a work of fiction and its audience. Heavy on wordplay and puns, the series deals with the tireless heroine's adventures balancing her work as an agent of Jurisfiction in the Great Library and LiteraTec in the outside world, to say nothing of her responsibilities as a wife and mother."

The serial killer, Claudandus aka Pascal, is purely motivated by a deep hatred of humans after a traumatic past as the victim of some truly sadistic animal experiments in which he and other cats were used as lab rats, which leads him to try to create a race of "genetically perfect" cats while murdering those he considers to be inferior. He dreams of a future in which humans have been replaced as the dominant species by this future breed of cats, the narration even including an imaginary scenerio of the very last human trying to hide in the ruins of civilization before being hunted down like prey.

[book--brackets]

Suggestions for fantasy books:

In Other Lands - Sarah Rees Brennan

Beauty - Robin McKinley

Uprooted - Naomi Novik

The Broken Earth (series) - N.K. Jemisin

The Princess Bride - William Goldman

The Deep - River Solomon

Poison - Chris Wooding

Inkeeper Chronicles (series) - Ilona Andrews

The Witcher (series) - Andrzej Sapkowski

The Poppy War (series) - R. F. Kuang

The Live Ship Traders (series) - Robin Hobb

Sorceror Royal (series) - Zen Cho

The New Moon's Arms - Nalo Hopkinson

The Curse Workers (series) - Holly Black

Alice (duology) & Lost Boy - Christina Henry

Ring Shout - P. Djèli Clark

Kingkiller Chronicle (series) - Patrick Rothfuss

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree

Iron Widow - Jay Zhao

Coraline - Neil Gaiman

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi

Thursday Next (series) - Jasper Fforde

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

The Dark is Rising (series) - Susan Cooper

Wicked - Gregory Maguire

East - Edith Pattou

Knights of Liofwende (series) & The Welkin Weasels (series) - Garry Kilworth

Old Magic - Marianne Curley

Book of the Crow (series) - Catherine Fisher

Mongrels - Stephen Graham Jones

The Last Binding (series) - Freya Marske

Sorry, I know that's a lot! Anyway, thank you for running these polls and breaking my heart again and again, lol.

What a list! You've got a lot of great ones in here (I love you, Poppy War, Uprooted, and Iron Widow). I've added them all, though some of the names changed due to series vs book titles

[69constellationsinatrenchcoat]

RED SIDE STORY IS OUT JSHSJAJA I NEED SLEEP BUT I WANT TO READ

WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR THIRTEEN YEARS. WHY MUST I SLEEP SHSHJJS

ksjsjdhaksgaksjskskagaka

[tiger-moran]

I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair and it was fine (although I can't say the whole 'arguing over who owns Crimea' element is something that sits comfortably with me given recent events). I mean it's really confusing sometimes but I do like Thursday Next herself a lot in it and it was... fine, until the end and then it's just giving me bad feelings about the whole rest of the series.

She got married. To a character who I feel like I know pretty much nothing about and as far as I can see she has absolutely no chemistry with. And then people keep going on about her having kids with him. And I don't know about beyond that but it appears the sequel does relate heavily to her supposed love for this guy and having kids with him but this romance/marriage plotline just feels so shoehorned in/tacked on for no actual reason to me and I just Do Not Care about her romance/marriage/having babies, and this really has kind of spoilt the first book for me quite a lot. Also now I'm really kind of 'meh' about the idea of reading any more of the series.

So that was disappointing.

[do-you-ship-this-book-couple]

Do you ship...

[theygotlost]

MASTERPOST OF MY ALL MY 3 YEAR OLD THURSDAY NEXT ART THAT LOOKS SO BAD AND I HATE IT BUT IDC ANYMORE

[shititskat]

Just gotta survive 8 more years of an acting career til I’m the perfect age to play Thursday Next in the film adaptation of the first book. Pretty sure I can handle that.