Behold the Penultimate Peril!

Today it can be revealed: Book #12 in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is The Penultimate Peril (click cover for full view). To celebrate the book’s release, Snicket—or, rather, his constant stand-in, Daniel Handler—will conduct a reading broadcast via satellite to fifteen movie theaters nationwide, then go out on an eight-city tour. Concerning the latest misadventures of the Baudelaire children, he tells the AP’s Hillel Italie:

“It’s full of depressing details about the children’s lives, and, I’m sorry to say, it’s the longest in the series. So in terms of total misery, it’s quite a lot to deal with well, both in terms of the number of pages and the amount of misery per page.”

Does anybody else feel an ominous chill at the thought of fifteen theaters full of kids doing the audience participation bits to “Scream or Run Away,” the villainous Count Olaf’s theme song?

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.