Dark Reading Matter: The 8th and final novel in the brilliant and unforgettable Thursday Next series
Jasper Fforde
Jun 2026 · Thursday Next Book 8 · Hodder & Stoughton
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infoThis book will become available on June 4, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this audiobook
The final novel in the highly acclaimed and beloved Thursday Next series. Will Thursday find her happy ending?
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, 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.
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.
'Hugely funny and gloriously imaginative' Daily Express
'Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde' Herald
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, 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.
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.
'Hugely funny and gloriously imaginative' Daily Express
'Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde' Herald
About the author
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, and the Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television by Sky.
Fforde lives and works in his adopted nation of Wales.
Visit Jasper's website, www.jasperfforde.com, find him on Facebook, www.facebook.com/jasperffordebooks, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jasperfforde.
Fforde lives and works in his adopted nation of Wales.
Visit Jasper's website, www.jasperfforde.com, find him on Facebook, www.facebook.com/jasperffordebooks, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jasperfforde.
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