Some boxes should never be opened.
For the first time, the complete A Series of Unfortunate Events – including the highly feared #13: The End – is available in one awful package!
We can't keep you from succumbing to this international bestselling phenomenon, but we can hide all thirteen books in a huge, elaborately illustrated, shrink–wrapped box, perfect for filling an empty shelf or deep hole.
From The Bad Beginning to The End, this box set, adorned with Brett Helquist art from front to back, is the only choice for people who simply cannot get enough of a bad thing!
Ages 10+
Lemony Snicket is often despondent, mostly about his published research, which includes A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Composer Is Dead.
Brett Helquist's celebrated art has graced books from the charming Roger, The Jolly Pirate, to the alarming New York Times bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events, to the cozy E. B. White Read-Aloud Award finalist bedtime for bear. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.
But before getting to what promises to be "the most unfortunate event of all," it is first necessary to familiarize oneself with the mysterious man who created a mega-selling series of children's novels pivoting on the premise of placing young people in peril. According to his autobiography Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography, Snicket "grew up near the sea and currently lives beneath it. To his horror and dismay, he has no wife or children, only enemies, associates, and the occasional loyal manservant. His trial has been delayed, so he is free to continue researching and recording the tragic tales of the Baudelaire orphans." Hmmm. Perhaps an autobiography purporting that it may or may not be true isn't the best place to begin.
Instead, let us focus on Daniel Handler, the man who might actually be responsible for composing the Series of Unfortunate Events books according to certain skeptics (which include Handler, himself). Daniel Handler has been asked many times why anyone would want to make a career of chronicling the ghastly trials of a trio of ill-fated orphans. "When I was young, my favorite stories were not the sort of children's books that are constantly being thrust at you when you're little," he explained in an audio essay on Barnes & Noble.com. "I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family. So, I guess it should not be surprising that when I turned to children's literature I tried to think of all sorts of interesting things to happen to small children, and all of these things were pretty dreadful."
Handler has long made it clear that his wildly popular series would be limited to thirteen installments. The Penultimate Peril: Book the Twelfth finds the much-beleaguered Baudelaire orphans "enjoying" a family vacation at a menacing hotel, and Handler is wrapping up his saga with The End: Book the Thirteenth, which promises to tie up all remaining threads in the story in an undoubtedly exciting manner.
However, the conclusion of his series is no indication that Handler plans on bringing his writing career to an end. He has also written adult-targeted titles under his own name, including his latest, Adverbs: A Novel. This exploration of love, which Publishers Weekly deemed "lovely" and "lilting," may forgo the trademark Lemony Snicket wry morbidity, but Handler ensures readers that the book isn't without its own unfortunate events. "It's a fairly miserable story, as any story about love will be," he says. "People try to find love -- some of them find it, some of them don't, some of them have an unhappy time even if they do find it -- but it is considerably more cheerful than any of my so-called children's books."
His interest in music does not end with the accordion. Close friend and leader of indie-rock band The Magnetic Fields Steven Merritt has written an original song for each audio book version of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Merritt and Handler will be releasing a CD of all 13 "dreadful" songs when the final installment of the series is published in late 2006. Handler also lent his accordion-laying talents to The Magnetic Fields' critically acclaimed album 69 Love Songs.
Handler's persistence may rival that of the never-say-die Baudelaire orphans. His first novel, The Basic Eight, was rejected 37 times before it was finally published.
He enjoys the work of novelist Haruki Murakami so much that Handler devoted an entire essay to the subject in the plainly and guilelessly entitled Village Voice review, "I Love Murakami."
According to a former high school classmate writing in the local paper, Handler was "voted not only Class Clown, but also Best Actor, Chatterbox, and Teacher's Pet."
A few fun facts from our interview with Handler:
"I can cook anything."
"I know one very good card trick."
"I auditioned for an enormous role in the film Gigli."
A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning
Chapter One
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
Their misfortune began one day at Briny Beach. The three Baudelaire children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley-the word "rickety," you probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collapse"-alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. This particular morning it was gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the Baudelaire youngsters one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossibleto find a good place to lay one's blanket. On gray and cloudy days, the Baudelaires had the beach to themselves to do what they liked.
Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, liked to skip rocks. Like most fourteen-year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand than when she used her left. As she skipped rocks, she was looking out at the horizon and thinking about an invention she wanted to build. Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair. This morning she was thinking about how to construct a device that could retrieve a rock after you had skipped it into the ocean.
Klaus Baudelaire, the middle child, and the only boy, liked to examine creatures in tidepools. Klaus was a little older than twelve and wore glasses, which made him look intelligent. He was intelligent. The Baudelaire parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only twelve, Klaus of course had not read all of the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information from his readings. He knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. He knew who killed Julius Caesar. And he knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach, which he was examining now.
Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest, liked to bite things. She was an infant, and very small for her age, scarcely larger than a boot. What she lacked in size, however, she made up for with the size and sharpness of her four teeth. Sunny was at an age where one mostly speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks. Except when she used the few actual words in her vocabulary, like "bottle," "mommy," and "bite," most people had trouble understanding what it was that Sunny was saying. For instance, this morning she was saying "Gack!" over and over, which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!"
Sure enough, in the distance along the misty shore of Briny Beach there could be seen a tall figure striding toward the Baudelaire children. Sunny had already been staring and shrieking at the figure for some time when Klaus looked up from the spiny crab he was examining, and saw it too. He reached over and touched Violet's arm, bringing her out of her inventing thoughts.
"Look at that," Klaus said, and pointed toward the figure. It was drawing closer, and the children could see a few details. It was about the size of an adult, except its head was tall, and rather square.
"What do you think it is?" Violet asked.
"I don't know," Klaus said, squinting at it, "but it seems to be moving right toward us."
"We're alone on the beach," Violet said, a little nervously. "There's nobody else it could be moving toward." She felt the slender, smooth stone in her left hand, which she had been about to try to skip as far as she could. She had a sudden thought to throw it at the figure, because it seemed so frightening.
"It only seems scary," Klaus said, as if reading his sister's thoughts, "because of all the mist."
This was true. As the figure reached them, the children saw with relief that it was not anybody frightening at all, but somebody they knew: Mr. Poe. Mr. Poe was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire's whom the children had met many times at dinner parties. One of the things Violet, Klaus, and Sunny really liked about their parents was that they didn't send their children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation as long as they helped clear the table. The children remembered Mr. Poe because he always had a cold and was constantly excusing himself from the table to have a fit of coughing in the next room.
Mr. Poe took off his top hat, which had made his head look large and square in the fog, and stood for a moment, coughing loudly into a white handkerchief. Violet and Klaus moved forward to shake his hand and say how do you do.
Excerpted from A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck (Books 1-13) by Lemony Snicket Copyright © 2006 by Lemony Snicket. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
ECBooks
Posted October 29, 2008
I Also Recommend:
This is one of my all time favorite series of books! I have been a fan from book one. These are great books overall. They are a must read to anyone who thinks about reading them. I have to say the farther you get into the series the better the books become. The series is about three kids (Violet, Klaus, and Sunny) who's parents perish in a fire. They become orphans and have to live with Count Olaf. Throughout the series Count Olaf tries to steal their fortune and the three kids go and live with different relatives. This is a great series!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 19, 2011
From the moment they are approached by Mr. Poe about their parents dying in a mysterious fire on Briny Beach, to Count Olaf's house, to Uncle Monty's house, to Aunt Josephine, to the mill, school, 667 dark street, and other amazing adventures, these books will make your heart race, the suspense, the Baudelaire orphans will make you excited to read book after book all the way to THE END.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I loved this series it is one of my all time favorites I started reading it in Second grade and finished in the fourth. It took so long because everyone in the higher grades was reading it too so it took a while for them to get to me. Once they did it was like I was the fire and it was gasoline fueling my urge to read like no other. Now in the eighth grade I can still remember this book clearly and thats how you know it was good. If you can still remember somethinng so well after so many years. Snicket is an artist of words! Sicerely,Your average14year old
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.this series
its alot of fun to read! i read the whole series through and it was great!
and i definitely recommend it!!
definitely put this on your wish list...
i have tons more i recommend to!
just check out my profile!!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 17, 2009
I Also Recommend:
This book is thrilling, and adventerous all the way from The Bad Beggening...to THE END!!!Honestly my most recomended is #5, or #6.But all of them are really good!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Actually, my daughter and I have only been able to buy the first 6 paperback, and hope to buy the rest one day. When she was 7, I read these to her one summer before bedtime. She cheered me on to read the whole thing before the summer was out.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted September 5, 2008
These books are really great. I started reading them in 2006 and I only tought there were 3 books because of the movie. But then I went to my library and saw all 13 of them. My favorite would have to be the slippery slope. It is very mystery like because you don't know what is going to happen next. I think kids7-13 should read these books because, at the end of each chapter something BIG happens and you just want to read more. Then, if you read more, you learn more. These books teach you many things. The author put meanings of words in very funny so that you learn while having fun. It took me a year to read all 13 books and that was the best year ever! I would do it again if I wanted to. These are great books.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 11, 2008
Although the reader already knows that the book is a sad and confusing. The author still tells the reader, in every one of his books, that the book which they are reading is sad and confusing and that they should read another book which has a happier ending. This gets to be VERY annoying after reading it more then eight times in more then eight books! The books always end with the villain, ¿Uncle¿ Count Olaf, getting away and the orphan¿s other uncle, Mr. Poe, never seems to recognize the villain¿s face after he has it so many times . In spite of all this the book is very enjoyable. The reason is that the author describes the setting very well. He goes into very small details that the person who is reading can actually imagine the setting and actually see what¿s going on because it is being explained so well. The author is so creative when it comes to ideas that may seem out of the ordinary in real life but then it just seems normal in the story. Maybe the reason why many readers are so attached to the series is not because of the same cliff hanger at the end of the story but the event itself. When a reader reads this book it seems like the reader is actually a character in the story and they actually have the same emotion that the characters in the book have. This is because of the well explained details that draws the reader¿s attention. The author doesn¿t draw the reader¿s attention in the beginning of his books, but his attention grabber is towards the middle of the book where most of the action is and that is what makes his writing so interesting. Phenomenal!!!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 16, 2007
Have you ever had one of those days where it seems like nothing is going as planned? Well, for the Baudellaire orphans, everyday is a day that doesn¿t go as planned. The book A Series of Unfortunate Events, by none other than Lemony Snicket, tells the story of the three orphans whose parents perished in a fire that destroyed their entire home. Though the story may sound gloomy and depressing, it is intended for young children, but reaches out to people of all ages because of its heart-warming tale of courage, triumph, and happiness. It may sound a bit contradicting that these children¿s parents die in a house fire and here I am saying that it¿s a heart-warming tale. Don¿t get me wrong, the book does have its high¿s and its low¿s. For example, one day the children are living the high life and are at the top of their game, and the next, they are contemplating whether or not they should even be around or what their purpose in life is. The author does a good job of supporting his feelings towards what is actually happening in the story by taking an almost personal approach to the way he tells it. He makes the reader feel like he is speaking privately with him/her and by doing so he better catches your sympathy, joy, and sadness. For example, at one point in the story, his comedic side shows itself when he repeats a sentence as joke, poking fun at the times us readers have accidentally read the same sentence twice. It really does throw the reader for a loop. Now since this story is supposed to be a dreary and depressing one, the author wants you feel sympathetic for the orphans. Now in my opinion, the author did a 50/50 job on capturing my sympathy because I was to busy always wondering where the stories villain ¿Count Olaf¿ would pop up next. The book does a really good job of keeping you guessing, page by page. My final thought on this book is this: I feel this book is a fun, entertaining, and hair-raising adventure, as you follow along side the Baudellaire orphans as they try to find their place in life. The book might confuse and baffle you, but in the end, everything comes together like a good puzzle. I highly recommend it for anyone of any age.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 23, 2006
Great Books i read every one of them and i plan on buying the box set, great storys many unsolved answers, but in the end they pull them all together, ps the longest it every took me to read one of these books is 2 days!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 2, 2012
Excellent books for first time young adult readers. The story line to each book is creative and never repeats it self. It usually breaks down the definitions to big words that may be difficult for the younger readers. Every page keeps you gessing about the next move Count Olaf is going to make. Highly reccomend for all ages.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted September 9, 2012
The Books are great and I got the box in a good state.. They were just a little bit damaged.. But not hat much....
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Jenny_Rose
Posted April 27, 2012
I remember when these books originally came out and I didn’t understand the fascinations with such a dismal sounding title. When my older daughter brought one home and didn’t want to stop reading, I knew it was time to check the book out. I borrowed the book after she went to bed and … couldn’t put it down! Lemony Snicket is a brilliant writer! His comedic triplets are hilarious. The doom and gloom are so over the top that I had to laugh. The ramblings would seem to break writing rules, yet deliver comic relief and do not detract from the story. Dare I say, these books are just as good as Harry Potter—and I thoroughly enjoyed the Harry Potter series.
There were a few volumes that I thought were darker than the others (thus the 4 star rating) such as cook 3, 4, 8, and 9. Without spoiling the end of The End, I felt it all ended a little sadder than I had hoped; but I guess with the title of A Series of Unfortunate Events, one can’t expect a happily ever after.
I would definitely recommend this series to the 8-12 year old crowd!
VFD
Posted May 26, 2011
This series of books is on of the greatest stories i have ever read, there were very few problems; one being it gets a little boring around The Carnivorous Carnival. other than that it is very good, it can be a lot of things at once happy, funny & sad (mostly sad). A very good read if you ask me! and from the look of the ratings other people think so too!! it is worth the money and will keep you reading and wanting more.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 30, 2010
This Lemony Snicket set was bought as one of the Christmas gifts for my son (13 yrs). He was thrilled with the set and immediately started to read. This being at the end of January now, he is on the fifth book. I highly recommend this entire set. It is exciting and you can hardly wait to see what is going to happen next. Terrific writing and characters.
I would also highly recommend the unabridged audio books of this entire series narrated by Tim Curry.
an_3
Posted January 30, 2010
a series of unfortunate events was an exhilarating series! for me i think the last book was unbelievable but i cant say what happens because ill ruin it for people that want to read it. people say that the first book says it all but it actually doesnt. the other stories say different things about the bauldelaries (i think i spelled it right)lives but um each story has another part of their lives. if you buy the whole wreck its pretty cool because it has a free poster and has count olafs picture on each side that shows hows hes suppose to look like as he puts on a disguise (well thats what got in the mail). for me its sort of hard to explain and you must be thinking why is this person writing a review. well i just wanted to tell people that i should recommend a series of unfortunate events to others that would want to have the time to read the whole series. if this doesnt really help sorry! :P
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.SOUE is an awesome series...Lemony Snicket has awesome ideas for each book he writes. They all are very different but they surround around Count Olaf, the Baudelaire children, and the mysterious letters V.F.D.
I would definitely recommend reading this series no matter how old u r.
I started reading "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" because my neighbor was reading it, and I just did whatever she did, and I didn't really understand it very much. Years later, I started reading these books again and then did I truly realize how really great they were. The Baudelaire Children are three orphans who's lives turned into misery when their parents got killed in a fire. Their evil uncle Count Olaf always tries to steal their fortune as they move from guardian to guardian. The Baudelaires have many adventures and make some friends and solve mysteries. Lemony Snicket brings the humor into this book by saying himself that it's, well, bad. I love his style and how he talks to the reader and how he always relates to other stories. I also love the way he relates the story to his own life by using Beatrice and the last name, "Snicket." There is so much mystery and adventure in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and I loved it.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Even though they're "unfortunate", Lemony Snicket writes in a way that's not sad. Sure, you fell bad for the Baudelaires, but it's not written in a way that makes you cry. The books are about the adventures of Sunny, Klaus, and Violet Baudelaire, after the "death" of their parents in an "accidental" fire of their home. Following the death, the Baudelaires are sent to live with "their uncle", Count Olaf.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 2, 2009
Although reading only nine of the thirteen books, I for one say that there is no need in reading the others. The books basically have the same plot except that Count Olaf dresses as a new person to get the same fortunate. He tries this for twelve times, but on the thirteenth try he dies. If I were Lemony Snicket, I would only do at least four books. I do not see how people can be so amazed by these books and do not realize that it's the same plot over and over again. I know, the plots may change, but it is the same idea for Count Olaf, the same idea that the Baudelaires get to foil him, and the same way Mr. Poe doesn't see right through Count Olaf. Either Mr. Poe needs new glasses or they need a new Mr. Poe. He doesn't care enough about the orphans to actually see what is going on. And I wouldn't write a book with the starting sentences about misery, saying that you should read another book. It's the same thing. And the way he can go off subject to a whole new thing. No need in writing a book when it's the same thing over and over again. No wonder he can finish his books real quick; he uses the same thing. I would not reccomend this book to many people because I know that they are smart enough to figure out that this man is using the same plot. It makes no sense.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Overview
Some boxes should never be opened.
For the first time, the complete A Series of Unfortunate Events – including the highly feared #13: The End – is available in one awful package!
We can't keep you from succumbing to this international bestselling phenomenon, but we can hide all thirteen books in a huge, elaborately illustrated, shrink–wrapped box, perfect for filling an empty shelf or deep hole.
From The Bad ...