BOOKWORMS will have a chance to come face-to-face with Swindon writer Jasper Fforde next month.

He will be signing copies of his latest novel, Something Rotten, at Borders store on the Orbital Retail Park from 1pm on Saturday, July 31.

The book is Fforde's fourth fantasy novel set in a surreal Swindon and is the latest in his Thursday Next series, which charts the adventures of a literary detective who can jump in and out of fiction.

Thursday comes out of exile to return to her native Swindon after spending the third book, the Well of Lost Plots, hiding in a third-rate detective novel set in Reading.

But her home town is not as she left it. Something is indeed rotten in England and that something is a would-be dictator by the name of Yorrick Kaine. Fforde's books are set in 1980s Swindon in a world where Wales is a socialist republic, the Crimean war is still raging and cloned dodos have replaced cats and dogs as the most popular pet.

And Swindonians will be pleased to see a few of our famous landmarks given a mention, including the Magic Roundabout.