The Reptile Room

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of middle-grade novels by the American author Daniel Handler, which he published under the pen name Lemony Snicket (who is also the narrator of the series). The 13 books of the series were published between 1999 and 2006. The series chronicles the host of tragic events that befall the Baudelaire children—Violet, Klaus, and Sunny—after their parents’ death. In the first book, a kind but naive man named Mr. Poe places the children in the care of a relative they’ve never met: Count Olaf. However, Count Olaf turns out to be abusive, greedy, and even murderous, willing to kill to get the children’s fortune. Though he can’t kill all the children, in Book 1, he tries to marry Violet to access her inheritance; Klaus saves the day through his research skills, finding important legal knowledge. Although the children escape the clutches of Count Olaf and expose him as evil to Mr. Poe, Count Olaf gets away, along with his theater troupe full of evil minions.

In consecutive novels in the series, the Baudelaire children continue to be placed with new guardians instead of Count Olaf. However, Count Olaf uses his acting skills and theater costumes to intrude upon each new home of the Baudelaires, either by disguising himself as a different guardian or by infiltrating the new guardian’s life. He is on a mission to seize the Baudelaire fortune and end their lives once they come of age. Though the children always recognize him as Count Olaf, he threatens and manipulates them into keeping quiet. Even when they speak up, Mr. Poe and others usually don’t believe the children until it’s too late.

The books in order are The Bad Beginning (1999), The Reptile Room (1999), The Wide Window (2000), The Miserable Mill (2000), The Austere Academy (2000), The Ersatz Elevator (2001), The Vile Village (2001), The Hostile Hospital (2001), The Carnivorous Carnival (2002), The Slippery Slope (2003), The Grim Grotto (2004), The Penultimate Peril (2004), and The End (2006). Additionally, Handler has written other books about the backstory of Lemony Snicket, the narrator of the Baudelaires’ tales: Lemony Snicket, the Unauthorized Autobiography (2002), The Beatrice Letters (2006), and a four-book series about Lemony Snicket’s childhood, All the Wrong Questions (2012-2015). A Series of Unfortunate Events was adapted into a film in 2004 and a three-season Netflix series in 2017-2019.