Comic Fantasy 07
Tangled Web UK: New Comic Fantasy Titles
07
Jasper Fforde
First Among Sequels
Published July 2007 by Hodder & Stoughton at £12.99
ISBN: 0340835753
A Thursday Next Novel
Fourteen years after she pegged out at 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday Next us grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels.
Her idle sixteen-year-old son would rather sleep all day than save the world from imminent destruction, the government has dangerously high stupidity surplus, and the Stiltonista Cheese Mafia are causing trouble for Thursday in her hometown of Swindon.
Then things begin to get bad. As Reality Book Shows look set to transplant Reality TV Shows and Goliath invent a trans-Fictional tourist coach, Thursday must once again have her wits about her as she travels to the very limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to rescue the reading experience From almost certain destruction …
'Jasper Fforde's imagination is a literary volcano in full spate' Independent
Praise for Jasper Fforde
`Jasper Fforde has gone where no other fictioneer has gone before. Millions of readers now follow. Thank you, Jasper' Guardian
`Don't ask. Just read it. Fforde is a true original' Sunday Express
`The pleasure in Fforde's quirkily brilliant books is that they can be enjoyed on so many levels by all ages. For the younger reader they are straight up and down crazy fun in a world
where dodos and Neanderthals exist, where cloning is commonplace and where talking monkeys in floral dresses are (almost) part and parcel of everyday life. For the older
reader there are the extra joys of literary references, wordplay, silliness and satire' Sydney Morning Herald
`This year's grown-up J K Rowling' The Sunday Times
`Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure' Sunday Telegraph
`Douglas Adams would be proud' Scotsman
About The Author
Jasper Fforde has been writing purely for his own pleasure for the past ten years, and is delighted that this has all changed. Just recently he has traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales and has a passion for aviation.
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Jasper Fforde
The Fourth Bear
Pbk published June 2007 by Hodder at £6.99
ISBN: 0340835737
The Gingerbreadman - psychopath, genius, convicted murderer and biscuit - is loose on the streets of Reading.
But it isn’t Jack Spratt’s case. Enforced non-involvement looks to be frustrating, until a chance encounter at the oddly Familiar Dêjà Vu Club leads them into the hunt of missing journalist Henrietta ‘Goldy’ Hatchett, star reporter For The Daily Toad.
The last witnesses to see her alive were the Three Bears comfortably living a life of rural solitude in Andersen’s wood. But all is not what it seems. Are the unexplained explosions around the world related to a missing nuclear scientist? How dangerous can cucumber-growing be?
And most important of all: how could the bears’ porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time?
‘Best-selling Fforde’s hilarious, absurd and utterly compelling new series’ Mirror
About The Author
Jasper Fforde has been writing purely for his own pleasure for the past ten years, and is delighted that this has all changed. Just recently he has traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales and has a passion for aviation.
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Tom Holt
Barking
Published March 2007 by Orbit at £12.99
ISBN: 184149285X
Monsters are roaming the streets of London.
Of course, some monsters are scarier than others:
Unicorns? No bother.
Vampires? Big deal.
Werewolves? Ho hum.
Lawyers?
…Aaargh!
Duncan’s boss doesn’t think he’s cut out to be a lawyer. He isn’t a pack animal. He lacks the killer instinct. But when hius best friend from school barges his way back into Duncan’s life, with a full supporting cast of lawyers, ex-wives, zombies and snow-white unicorns, it’s not long before things become distinctly unsettling.
Hairy, even.
Tom Holt's books are:
'Uniquely twisted… cracking gags' Rob Grant, The Guardian
'Dazzling' Time Out
`Wildly imaginative’ New Scientist
`Frothy, fast and funny’ Scotland on Sunday
‘Brilliantly funny’ Mail on Sunday
‘A riotously funny read, told with a cracking and inventive wit and the best similes since Douglas Adams’ SFX
‘When Holt’s on form the world seems a much cheerier place’ SFX
About The Author
Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting on the breeze from local meat-packing plant.
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Christopher Moore
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
Pbk published January 2007 by Orbit at £6.99
ISBN: 1841494518
Welcome to the world of Christopher Moore
Warning: may cause unnatural urges
The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally - well, to be accurate, artificially -business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks.
Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what’s wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.
‘Reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams’ The Philadelphia Inquirer
‘Deft and funny’ The New York Times Book Review
‘If there’s a funnier writer out there step forward’ PlayboyThousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
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Christopher Moore
Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings
Pbk published September 2007 by Orbit at £6.99
ISBN: 1841496170
Just why do humpback whales sing?
That’s the question that has marine behavioural biologist Nate Quinn and his crew prodding, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, grey marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a rather rude message, spelled out in foot-high letters: BITE ME.
Trouble is, Nate’s beginning to wonder if he hasn’t spent just a little too much time in the sun. ‘Cause no one else on his team saw a thing - not his long-time partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (ne Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot - and his research facility is trashed - Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.
`Humour that seamlessly blends lunacy with larceny … habit forming zaniness’ USA Today
`Tautly written with a zest for the absurd and unpredictable’ The New York Times Book Review
'This novel is all ambergris, no blubber' Washington Post Book WorldThousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
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Christopher Moore
Lamb
Pbk published August 2007 by Orbit at £6.99
ISBN: 1841494526
The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal,
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah’s best bud, who has been resurrected to fill us in on what really happened.
Verily, the Story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons and hot babes. But even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Saviour’s pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. Of course, there’s no one who loves Josh more - except maybe ‘Maggie’, Mary of Magdala - and Biff isn’t about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
And that’s the gospel truth.
`Although many will find something offensive in this novel ... they will find it simply impossible not to laugh’ Booklist
`Christopher Moore’s impish, madcap addition to the New Testament ... simultaneously addressing matters of ultimate concern while wallowing in the broadest possible slapstick’ Washington PostThousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
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Christopher Moore
A Dirty Job
Pbk published June 2007 by Orbit at £6.99
ISBN: 1841496030
It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it.
Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. Perhaps a little more of a Beta than an Alpha Male, but he makes a good living and has a pretty wife who’s currently in hospital about to have their first child, so life is, on the whole, good.
But normal service is about to be interrupted. As Charlie prepares to go home after the birth, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at his wife’s hospital bedside - a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird...
People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yep, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death.
'Dizzyingly inventive and hypnotically engaging. A Dirty Job is… like no other book I've ever read' Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked
'One of Moore's funniest capers yet' Kirkus ReviewsThousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
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Adam Roberts
Doctor Whom
Pbk published June 2007 by Gollancz at £6.99
ISBN: 0575079681
E.T. shoots and leaves
The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication
No Copies Sold Galaxywide… So Far
The extraterrestrial pointed his oddly-shaped weapon at the Dr. ‘This is the end.’ He said. ‘This is goodbye forever, Dr! No longer shall your kind oppress the Galaxy with your terrible grammatical correctitude-’
‘-ness,’ corrected the Dr. in a small voice. Even though he had his arms up, and a gun stuck into his chest, he couldn’t help it.
‘You die now!’ screeched the infuriated ET.
Join Dr Whom, his reliably pedantic assistant Linnaeus Trout … and Prose Tailor. Don’t worry, not even he knows why he’s (possessive apostrophe or the other sort? Uhhh) in the story. Oh (should there be a comma there do you think? Or perhaps an exclamation mark) that’s right he’s the narrator.
Still there should be plenty of room for all three of them on the adventure what with the TARDY being bigger on the inside than the out. Mind you, have you ever wondered (you haven’t have you?) what that would mean for the smallest room on the TARDY? Yes that’s right, the toilet is the size of an aircraft hangar. Where was I?
Oh yes. Join the Dr., (full stop then a comma - that can’t be right - look there’s a little squiggly green line under it) Linn and Prose as they fight to protect the galaxy from the perils of bad grammar, sloppy punctuation and careless sentence construction. Not to mention, the Cydermen, the remorseless android Garleks and the Celebrity Chefs du Monde.
A.R.R.R. Robert's actually used to be a Doctor you know. But now he's gone all hoity-toity and become a Professor. That's right, being a Doctor wasn't good enough for old A.R.R.R. 250,000 million pounds a year and all the elastic support bandages you can use and Doctor Robert's wanted more. It makes me sick. The National Health Ser ... Doctor of the Arts you say? Ah. I'll shut up.
And I bet he's got those bloody awful leather patches on the elbows of his cord jacket. Or is that just geography teachers? Look it's not easy writing cover copy you know.
About The Author
Adam Roberts is a lecturer at the University of London. He has an MA from Aberdeen and a PhD in English and Classics from Cambridge. Adam has been a Lecturer of English at Royal Holloway, University of London since 1990. His areas of specialisation are:
1) Nineteenth Century. He is Deputy Director of RHUL’s MA in Victorian Media and Culture.
2) Postmodernism. Deputy Director of the RHUL MA in Postmodernism, Literature and Contemporary Culture and
3) Science Fiction.
He is also the Deputy Dean of Arts.
Adam has edited and published a number of academic books: Robert Browning (Twayne 1996)
(ed.); Robert Browning (OUP: The Oxford Authors 1998); Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: a Guide (Ashgate 1999) (ed.); Tennyson (OUP: The Oxford Authors 2000)
(assoc. ed); The Oxford Readers Guide to Dickens (OUP 1999);
Fredric Jameson (Routledge: Routledge Critical Thinkers, September 2000);
Science Fiction (Routledge New Critical Idiom 2000).
Adam’s previous SF novels include Salt (for which he received an Arthur C. Clarke award nomination), he followed that up with On and last year published Stone. Polystom is Adam’s Roberts’ fourth novel.
He currently lives in Staines with his wife and daughter.
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