The Hostile Hospital

The Hostile Hospital is the eighth novel in A Series of Unfortunate Events, the children's series written by Lemony Snicket, the pen name of Daniel Handler, and published in 2001.

Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire have escaped the Village of Fowl Devotees and are trying to reach Mr Poe by telegram when a shopkeeper recognises them from the pages of an unreliable newspaper and they are once again accused of a murder they did not commit. They take refuge in a van belonging to Volunteers Fighting Disease, a group whose cheerful members have never read the newspaper and have no idea who their passengers are. The van carries them to Heimlich Hospital, which is still under construction and where the volunteers sing to the patients, and the children hope that the hospital's Library of Records will explain what the initials V.F.D. mean and what became of their parents.

The series tells its story in a deliberately gloomy comic voice, with a narrator who warns readers away from the book and pauses to explain awkward words. This volume continues the long search for answers about V.F.D., and the enemy following the children is closer than they think.