The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, 375 pages

In the third book in Fforde's Thursday Next series, "real person" Thursday has fled to the world of fiction to escape the Goliath Corporation and other adversaries. Through fiction's Character Exchange Program, she has settled into an unpublished novel for what she thinks will be a comfy respite from the real world. However, that's the furthest thing from what actually happens: Thursday's working on becoming a full Jurisfiction agent (the police of the fictional world), the novel she's in is set to be demolished unless something drastic happens, and one of her real-world adversaries has planted a mind-worm in her brain to torture Thursday into insanity. Like all the books in this series, it's a convoluted plot in a nearly-indescribable setting, but it's ridiculously fun. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is my favorite of the series, in part because the creativity is amplified in the within-fiction setting. This is the book that made me first read Anna Karenina and Rebecca, and it's put Wuthering Heights and all manner of Jane Austen back on my to-read list. It's simply fantastic.