'All life on earth was due to end in a month but I had more pressing matters to attend to. My husband didn't exist and unless I did something about it soon, he might remain that way for ever.'

Thursday Next, literary detective and registered dodo owner begins her married life with the disturbing news that her husband of only a month drowned thirty-eight years ago, and no one but Thursday has any memory of him at all. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. Could it be the ubiquitous Goliath Corperation, who will stop at nothing to get their operative Jack Schitt out of 'The Raven' - the poem in which Thursday trapped him? Or are more sinister forces at work in Swindon?

Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday heads back into fiction to search for some answers. Along the way she finds herself helping Miss Havisham close narrative loopholes in Great Expectations, struggling for a deeper understanding of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and learning the truth about Larry the Lamb. Paper politicians, lost Shakespearean manuscripts, woolly mammoth migrations, a flurry of near-fatal coincidences and impending Armageddon are all part of a greater plan.

But whose? And why?

I was mindlessly flicking through the reviews at the back of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About and I came across the first preamble to ever make my jaw drop. With a thunk, I was stunned trying to comprehend the concepts being thrown at me, and when I finally got it I laughed aloud. At the preamble. That had never happened to me before, and within minutes I had ordered the book...and then realised it was the second of a series, so I ordered the first book The Eyre Affair, and also the third.

I love the idea of going for adventures in books. In a more metaphorical way I've been doing that since I learnt to read at aged 3. I feel that I know the characters in the books I love, and they stay with me in some small way. That's why the ideas behind this series strike a cord with me. It sounds as though these are books written by a book lover for book lovers, and with liberal amounts of humour and Mickey-taking. I think I'm going to enjoy this.

As an aside, I gave Sarah the preamble to read, a stunned look crossed her face, and she uttered a simple 'wow'. When she had finished she looked up and said 'when you've finished, I'm borrowing it!'. Well, of course she is!