We are thrilled to welcome Jasper Fforde back to celebrate the release of Dark Reading Matter.

We are thrilled to welcome Jasper Fforde back to Waterstones Nottingham to celebrate the release of Dark Reading Matter, the eighth and final, gloriously imaginative instalment in his bestselling Thursday Next series.

The Dark Reading Matter is a theoretical realm that suggests that the observable bookverse can only account for 20% of the calculated total readable mass. Out there somewhere, possibly, is a larger and more expansive and unseeable 'Dark Bookverse' that contains millions of deleted novels, slush-pile manuscripts, lost poems, forgotten pop culture references, long unheard oral tradition, stories and ideas that were still in people's minds when they died.

It seems The Goliath Corporation hope to exploit the Dark Reading Matter for profit, and Thursday Next is once again pitted against a familiar foe. As is so often with Thursday's World, a visitor named Roger Thatt who purports to be from Fourth Wall Publishing has some peculiar ideas of his own that require careful thought. Is Thursday and everyone she knows living in a simulation? Was her world created from scratch Last Thursday as Roger supposes, and are the books she reads the only direction in which books can be read?

With existential questions the least of her troubles and a family to take care of, Thursday must defeat the Goliath Corporation, ensure that a tear in the fabric of the Bookworld does not suck all literature from hers, assist Roger Thatt to dealing with the issues in his own reality, and conclude her own series so she can enjoy a comfortable retirement, while dodging the threat of the worse fate imaginable for a story: The Scooby Doo ending.

Jasper will talk about his new book before an audience Q&A and book signing.

Jasper Fforde spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Times bestseller list with The Eyre Affair in 2001. Since then, he has written another fifteen novels, including the number one Sunday Times bestseller One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, The Constant Rabbit and The Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television by Sky. Fforde lives and works in his adopted nation of Wales. Jasper is @jasperfforde on Instagram, Threads and Substack. Visit his website at jasperfforde.com.

For any queries or accessibility requirements, please contact events.nottingham@waterstones.com

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