Dear reader, There is nothing to be found in Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ but misery and despair.

There is time to choose another international best-selling series to read.

But if you insist on reading the unpleasant adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, then proceed with caution… Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children.

They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features.

Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky. In The Hostile Hospital the siblings face a suspicious shopkeeper, unnecessary surgery, heart-shaped balloons, and some very startling news about a fire. In the tradition of great storytellers, from Dickens to Dahl, comes an exquisitely dark comedy that is both literary and irreverent, hilarious and deftly crafted. Despite their wretched contents, ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ has sold 60 million copies worldwide and been made into a Hollywood film starring Jim Carrey and a Netflix series starring Neil Patrick Harris.

You have been warned. Are you unlucky enough to own all 13 adventures? The Bad Beginning The Reptile Room The Wide Window The Miserable Mill The Austere Academy The Ersatz Elevator The Vile Village The Hostile Hospital The Carnivorous Carnival The Slippery Slope The Grim Grotto The Penultimate Peril The End And what about All the Wrong Questions?

In this four-book series a 13-year-old Lemony chronicles his dangerous and puzzling apprenticeship in a mysterious organisation that nobody knows anything about: ‘Who Could That Be at This Hour?’ ‘When Did you Last See Her?’ ‘Shouldn’t You Be in School?’ ‘Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights?’