DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Penultimate Peril

Lemony Snicket author Brett Helquist illustrator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Published:15th Aug '24

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Penultimate Peril cover

New for 2024, the 25th anniversary collector’s edition of the 12th book in Lemony Snicket’s classic children’s mystery series

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?’

‘Perhaps A Series of Unfortunate Events is so special simply because Handler saw children as people. He took his readers seriously' – Guardian

Lemony Snicket is the new Harry Potter’ – Entertainment Weekly

‘Deliciously wicked and wonderful’ – The Times

‘Lemony Snicket is a publishing phenomenon’ – Independent

‘Harry Potter’s worst nightmare’ – Evening Standard

ISBN: 9780008648602

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 30mm

Weight: 360g

368 pages