Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler has led several generations of young readers into that special and curious space of being hopelessly lost, and joyfully finding yourself, in the essential strangeness of literature. The wondrous and perilous journey of the Baudelaire orphans sprung from the author’s own path, from his childhood discovery of Baudelaire’s poetry through the countless peculiarities of his pursuit of a literary life --- abject failure and startling success, breakthrough and breakdown, concordance and controversy --- lit along the way by the books and culture he loved best. AND THEN? AND THEN? WHAT ELSE? is a book not just for anyone curious about the creator of Lemony Snicket, but for anyone who loved books when they were a child and still loves them now.

This is a story about two marriages. Or is it? It begins with a wedding, held in the small San Francisco forest of Bottle Grove --- bestowed by a wealthy patron for the public good, back when people did such things. Here is a cross section of lives, a stretch of urban green where ritzy guests, lustful teenagers, drunken revelers and forest creatures all wait for the sun to go down. The girl in the corner slugging vodka from a cough-syrup bottle is Padgett --- she's keeping something secreted in the woods. The couple at the altar are the Nickels --- the bride is emphatic about changing her name, as there is plenty about her old life she is ready to forget.

Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters next to the allure of sex. He fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls, which is beginning to earn him a not-quite-savory reputation around school. This leaves him adrift with only his best friend for company, and then something startling starts to happen between them that might be what he's been after all this time. And then he meets Grisaille.

WE ARE PIRATES by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives. It’s also about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home.