The Penultimate Peril
- Author Lemony Snicket, Illustrated by Brett Helquist
- Narrator To Be Confirmed
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date 26 February 2026
- Run Time 9 hours and 48 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Children’s / Teenage fiction: Classic fiction, Children’s / Teenage fiction: Crime and mystery fiction, Children’s / Teenage fiction: Family and home stories, Children’s / Teenage fiction: Friendship stories.
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What to expect
Dear Reader,
There is nothing to be found in ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ but misery and despair. You still have time to choose another international best-selling series to read. But if you insist on discovering 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 Penultimate Peril, the siblings face a harpoon gun, a rooftop sunbathing salon, two mysterious initials, three unidentified triplets, a notorious villain, and an unsavoury curry…
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?’
Critics Review
‘Perhaps A Series of Unfortunate Events is so special simply because Handler saw children as people. He took his readers seriously' – Guardian
n‘Lemony Snicket is the new Harry Potter’ – Entertainment Weekly
n‘Deliciously wicked and wonderful’ – The Times
n‘Lemony Snicket is a publishing phenomenon’ – Independent
n‘Harry Potter’s worst nightmare’ – Evening Standard
nMore from the same
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