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First Among Sequels is the announced name of the fifth novel in the Thursday Next series written by Jasper Fforde. It is due to be published on July 5th 2007 in the UK, and July 23rd 2007 in the USA.

The title of the fifth book was originally announced, at the end of Fforde's novel The Fourth Bear, published in July 2006, as The War of the Words. Since then, Fforde's official website has given the title as First Among Sequels, while the book is listed on Amazon.com as First Amongst Sequels.

It is fourteen years since Thursday Next pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, and the Special Operations Network has been disbanded. Using Swindon’s Acme Carpets as a front, Thursday and her colleagues Bowden, Stig and Spike continue their same professions, only illegally.

Of course, this front is itself a front for Thursday’s continued work at Jurisfiction, the Policing agency within the bookworld, and she is soon grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, an inter-genre war or two, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy books.

As the Council of Genres decree that making books interactive will boost flagging readership levels and Goliath attempt to perfect a trans-fictional tourist coach, Thursday find herself in the onerous position of having to side with the enemy to destroy a greater evil that threatens the very fabric of the reading experience.

With Aornis Hades once again on the prowl, an idle sixteen-year-old son who would rather sleep in than save the world from the end of time, a government with a dangerously high stupidity surplus and the Swindon 'Stiltonistas' trying to muscle in on her cheese-smuggling business, Thursday must once again travel to the very outer limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to triumph against increasing odds.

• Fforde Grand Central

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