The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde; Penguin Books

“England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in Wordsworth poems, militant Baconians roam freely spreading the gospel that Bacon, not Shakespeare, penned those immortal works. And forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for brainy, bookish (and heat-packing) Thursday Next, a renowned Special Operative in literary detection — that is, until someone begins murdering characters from works of literature.”

Robin’s Note: The Thursday Next series, which starts with this first volume, is both a thrilling chase through literary crime as well as a hilarious jab at literary theory, history, and academia.  While the jokes can be more academic, the feeling of these books is as far from typical “literary fiction” as you can get.  Thursday Next is a no-nonsense, hard-bitten civil servant, and her adventures in and out of the famous works of fiction are never boring.