After narrowly escaping the menacing clutches of the dastardly Count Olaf, the three Baudelaire orphans are taken in by a kindly herpetologist with whom they live happily for an all-too-brief time.

Accidents, evil plots, and general misfortune abound when, in their continuing search for a home, the Beaudelaire orphans are sent to live and work in a sinister lumber mill.

On the run as suspected murderers, the unlucky Baudelaire orphans find themselves trapped in the Caligari Carnival, where they must masquerade as freaks in order to hide from the evil Count Olaf.

Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.

"Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are brothers and sisters. They're orphans too, and the only way they can stay together is to make it on their own. When the children find an abandoned boxcar in the woods, they decide to call it home -- and become the Boxcar Children. -- Publisher's description.

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.

When David Copperfield's widowed mother remarries, David suffers from his stepfather's abuse. At age 8, David is sent away to a harsh school where the principal routinely beats the students. David's circumstances become even worse when he is removed from school and, at age 10, forced to labor from morning to night in a London warehouse. David then decides to take desperate action. He will run away to his great-aunt, who lives in Dover. Having never...

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.

Escapades of Pippi Longstocking, the strongest girl in the world, who lives with a horse and a monkey--but without any parents--in a villa at the edge of a Swedish village.

After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.