Dear Reader, I hope, for your sake, that you have not chosen to read this book because you are in the mood for a pleasant experience. If this is the case, I advise you to put this book down instantaneously, because of all the books describing the unhappy lives of the Baudelaire orphans, this one might be the unhappiest yet. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to Paltryville to work in a lumbermill, and they find disaster and misfortune lurking...

The woeful saga of the Baudelaire orphans continues as evil Count Olaf discovers their whereabouts at Esmé Squalor's seventy-one bedroom penthouse and concocts a new plan for stealing their family fortune.

Under a new government program based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child," the Baudelaire orphans are adopted by an entire town, with disastrous results.

On the run after being falsely accused of murder, the three Baudelaire orphans find themselves in the Heimlich Hospital, with the evil Count Olaf in close pursuit.

As their outrageous misfortune continues, the Baudelaire orphans are shipped off to a miserable boarding school, where they befriend the two Quagmire triplets and find that they have been followed by the dreaded Count Olaf.