A country house is unhappy when the city, with all its buildings and traffic, grows up around her.

From the Publisher: As the three Baudelaire orphans warily approach their new home Prufrock Preparatory School : they can't help but notice the enormous stone arch bearing the school's motto Memento Mori or "Remember you will die." This is not a cheerful greeting and certainly marks an inauspicious beginning to a very bleak story just as we have come to expect from Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events, the deliciously morbid set of books...

"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, The Miserable Mill might be the unhappiest yet. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to Paltryville to work in a lumber mill, and they find disaster and misfortune lurking...

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.

A daddy and child monster hunt for skink in the woods while telling jokes about the creepy crawlies they see and exchanging reassurances of love.

The story of a strange, shy little boy in a Japanese village school who was ignored by his classmates until suddenly, and almost too late, a new teacher showed them that Crow Boy has much to offer.