Emily

1887. London, but not as you know it. The Industrial Revolution went further than anyone could have imagined, and the sprawling, chaotic metropolis of Even Greater London spreads across the entire southern half of England. The immense Tower casts electricity through the sky, powering the mind-boggling mechanisms of the city around it. The engineer-army of Isambard Kingdom Brunel swarms across the capital, building, demolishing, and rebuilding whatever they see fit. And at the heart of all this sits the country's first Private Investigation Agency.

In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. 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.

On the last night of 1937, 25-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society - where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.