Books about characters being in stories

I love this genre and I want more of it. Pretty much any age ranges except preferably not picture books (although I do have a soft spot for We are in a Book!)

Basically any books about the characters being in books/stories (e.g. knowing they're in a book, participating with the plots of books/stories that exist within the book, knowingly following the plotline of separate stories, etc). Most examples I've seen are from the sudden increase of middle grade novels in the past 15 years or so with this general premise such as Story Thieves, Into the Wild, A Tale Dark and Grimm, and School for Good and Evil. Although I know there must be some books geared towards older audiences with this idea as well.

Anyway, I'd love any recommendations!

(I've also read all the books previously listed along with
The Other Alice and Of Giants and Ice)

>1 RosetheReader: Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.

>2 amanda4242: Thanks for the suggestion! That series looks terrific!

Would The neverending story fit?

Broken by Karin Fossum

Try Sophie's World, that one gets rather fascinating.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern might be another one...
Mechthild Glaser has a few YA type books that also feature books/stories
Nursery Crimes by Jasper Fforde (it's a duology)
The Lost Princess of Story by Suzanne de Planque

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head...

The Hell's library trilogy by A. J. Hackwith includes characters like this.

>4 Ennas: Yes it would fit! I was actually planning to put it as one of the examples in the original post, but its name escaped me!

These all look great! Thank you all so much for the suggestions!

On the lower end of the age range: Ever After High (media tie-in) by Shannon Hale

For older teens and adults: The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (currently being released in English) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

My mind went straight to jasper fforde too.

Because I read it recently, Libriomancer by Hines is on my mind. He's a librarian-mage who scoops things out of novels to use and it's a fun magic system until mad villains come out too. Trigger warning - the romance set up grossed me out a bit + I wish Hines had given the female lead more choices

Also, and this may be too obvious, Pratchett's Witches Abroad maybe? In Discworld the laws of narrative trump physics so it takes an act of heroism to stop a fairytale unfolding.

>11 aspirit: Oh yes Ever After High! Another classic example I somehow forgot to mention. I read Shannon Hale's Goose Girl series back in the day and have pretty much read all her books since. Thank you for both suggestions though!

>12 nessreader: Ooo the Libriomancer looks good, but I'll definitely keep that in mind. I'm definitely wary of books with romance where the female love interest doesn't have much autonomy.

I also had no idea that this was a plotline in the Discworld series! My reading goal for the year is actually to read all of the Discworld books, so now I have even more to look forward to in the series!

The Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke
The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley

>14 RosetheReader:

I was so disappointed! Got it because mage librarian and I used to follow the author's blog and he was decent bloke, but that misstep spoilt it.
Pratchett often has a kind of theme in any given discworld - wyrd sisters is full of jokes about shakespeare, guards guards which I usually suggest as a starter is a police procedural.

>15 merrystar:, the Inkheart trilogy has good 2nd and 3rd books, but first you have to get past that first one. Fortunately, there's a movie for that!

If on a winter's night a traveler is a standout instance.

A Princess of Roumania turns this notion on its head. Our "real" world is the contents of a fictional book in which the protagonist has been hidden, until circumstances force her into the reality of the world in which the story mainly transpires.

In the science-fictional Gnomon, an author is dead, but her recorded memories (technologically accessible to the police inspector protagonist) seem to transpire within her fictions.

One that is not at all for juvenile readers: The Hellfire Club has a fantasy book that is an obscure key to real crimes and conspiracies. Straub's earlier novel Ghost Story has a little taste of this business as well, with a horror writer character whose fictions seem to be manifesting around him.

>18 paradoxosalpha: Ooo thank you so much! Those all look great!