for the real world, where he ran for high political office during the events of Lost in a Good Book, only to be thwarted by Thursday and JurisFiction. By the events of Something Rotten, Kaine had advanced to the office of Chancellor, making him the second most powerful man in the land. He was using Mycroft Next's invention, the Ovinator, to manipulate Parliament into doing what he wanted. During the events of that novel, where he was made real and ultimately lost the Ovinator, he was removed from power. First Among Sequels reveals he has been arrested and imprisoned. Lavoisier Member of the ChronoGuard and former partner of Colonel Next. Appears briefly at the end of Eyre Affair, questioning Thursday about her father. He plays a much larger role in Lost in a Good Book, where he is hired by Goliath to eradicate Landen Parke-Laine. He holds a strong grudge against Thursday Next, and refuses to honor his part of the deal between her and Goliath as revenge for "what she did to him." This action has yet to occur in Thursday's timeline. Gran Next Always clad in blue gingham, 108-year-old Gran Next claims not to be able to die until she's read the ten most boring classics. She helps Thursday realize her bookjumping abilities by having her read The Flopsy Bunnies aloud over and over. In The Well of Lost Plots she comes to stay with Thursday in Caversham Heights and helps her to remember Landen and defeat Aornis's mindworm, assuring her that the real Aornis will be much easier. Gran's identity comes into question later on when Thursday realizes that both her grandmothers are long dead and she's only known Gran Next for about three years. Finally when Thursday is sentenced for her Jane Eyre fiction infraction—twenty years in blue gingham and having to read the ten most boring classics before she can die—she realizes that Gran is herself seventy years in the future. As friends and yet-unborn family members gather, Thursday reads the last paragraph of The Faerie Queene to Gran, who dies peacefully. Gran's long life includes many interesting jobs, such as working in many different divisions of SpecOps, spending twenty-four hours as a man and ruling as God Emperor of the Universe. Perkins and Snell David "Pinky" Perkins and Akrid Snell were the lead characters in a set of detective novels and both worked as