There is nothing to be found in the pages of A Series of Unfortunate Events but misery and despair. You still have time to choose another international best-seller to read. But if you must know what unpleasantries befall the charming and clever Baudelaire children read on . . .

Sadly this next-to-last chronicle of the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, The Penultimate Peril, is next-to-first in its supply of unpleasantness. Probably the next-to-last things you would like to read about are a harpoon gun, a rooftop sunbathing salon, two mysterious initials, three unidentified triplets, a notorious villain and an unsavoury curry. Next-to-last things are the first thing to be avoided!

With 5 million copies sold in the UK alone, one might consider Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events to make him one of the most successful children's authors of the past decade. We, however, consider these miserable so-called adventure stories and the Hollywood film starring Jim Carrey that accompanied the books for children as nothing more than a dreadful mistake.

This is book 12 in A Series Of Unfortunate Events .

There are 368 pages in this book. This book was published 2010 by Egmont UK Ltd .

Lemony Snicket is the author of A Series Of Unfortunate Events and Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. He generally spends his holidays recuperating.