The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

 The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

A wondrously wacky, bookish, sci-fi mystery that might strike you as odd at first, but if you can suspend your understanding of reality temporarily, it'll take you on quite a ride. Thursday Next (only the first of the curious character names) is a lady detective trying to identify the person causing havoc with some well-loved classic books.

In her world, it's possible to enter books - as in go through a portal and be in the time and place of the story - and that's exactly what Thursday must do to save Jane Eyre. Then the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit goes missing, from a location so secure that only a thief of very special talents could have taken it. The challenge is to retrieve it before the thief can enter the book and make some drastic change that will then affect every other copy in the world, effectively ruining the story.  

Other interesting tidbits...Thursday's aunt gets lost in a Wordsworth poem and can't get out, Thursday has a cloned pet dodo, and time travel is a thing.  

This is 374 pages of mind-boggling fun, but that's not enough so I've ordered the second and third books in the series. There are 8 in all but I have a feeling that won't seem like enough either!