Bridget Jones is returning with a third book – as a widow! Author Helen Fielding has killed off her famous literary character’s love interest, Mark Darcy, in the latest “Bridget Jones’s Diary, Mad About the Boy.”

The astonishing development in the story was revealed after extracts of Fielding’s latest novel were published in the Sunday Times Magazine.

Jones, the main character of the novels made famous by actress Renee Zellweger in the 2001 rom-com “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and its 2004 sequel “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” began as a thirty-something in the ‘90s London who was looking for love.

She eventually married barrister Darcy, and, as readers of the novels assumed, went to have a happily ever after with him.

Not quite, as it turned out.

Excerpts of the third book were printed in the Sunday Times Magazine, and they revealed that Jones is back in the singles’ market after Darcy had died and left her with two children.

The setting is 15 years after “The Edge of Reason” ended. Just like before, Jones is still worried about her weight and about how much she smokes and drinks. In the new novel, however, she’s now in her fifties with an obsession with wrinkles.

“Has it really been five years? Oh Mark, Mark. What am I doing? Why did I start all this? Why didn’t I just stay as I was? Sad, lonely, workless, sexless but at least a mother, a widow, and faithful to their father,” an excerpt reads.

A new book also means a new love interest. Jones meets her new boyfriend, a 30-year-old toyboy named Roxster, on Twitter five years after Darcy’s death.

It’s yet to be revealed how Darcy died. It will be tackled in a flashback in the book, and readers will have to wait until “Mad About the Boy” is published on October 10 to find out.

Fans of the original book and its film adaptation were horrified as early as now, though.

“I don’t think I can read this now,” Twitter user Lisa Matthews said of Fielding’s upcoming novel.

“Can’t believe Mark is dead in the next Bridget jones book! I want to cry,” added Beci.

“Read a spoiler for the next Bridget Jones book. Pardon me, I’d like a ticket for the next flight to the People’s Republic of Hell No,” Jenny Trout fumed on the social networking site.

Another user named Miss Whiddlesmort cried, “I don’t want to live in a world where Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones aren’t living happily ever after!!!”

Fielding created Bridget Jones in 1995 as a weekly column character for a newspaper. She turned the column into a novel in 1996, hence the birth of “Bridget Jones Diary.” In 1998, it was followed with “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.”

In its film adaptations, Zellweger played the title character, with Colin Firth as Darcy, and Hugh Grant as Jones’ boss and other love interest Daniel Cleaver.