The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Fiction. Audiobook from HighBridge Audio. Published in 2002. Purchased at Audible.com

Once when I was visiting in Austin, my Mom and I went to a Terry Pratchett book signing. While standing around afterwards waiting to get a copy of Monstrous Regiment signed for my brother, we started chatting with a fellow who was there for the signing, too. He recommended Jasper Fforde to me, and I wrote down a couple of the titles that he mentioned. Eventually I ran across the books and read them from the library in Windsor. Recently while perusing Audible looking for something to listen to on our trip to the Alabama Gulf Coast, I found Jasper Fforde and decided that I would enjoy rereading them by listening to them this time.

I've really enjoyed how the author brings classic fiction characters to life and mixes them with a slightly twisted version of our world.

Publisher's summary:
Great Britain, circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality, and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude. Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids

To buy from amazon.co.uk, click here: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next)
from amazon.com, click here: The Eyre Affair