In "The Vile Village" the poor Baudelaires are shipped off to a village called V.F.D. to be raised by the entire community, since no one wants to be personally responsible for them. The town is unique in that it is covered in crows, and ruled by a council of elders who have a whole lot of stupid rules, like no mechanical devices or books. The town handyman, Hector, takes them home with him to eat and sleep. Hector is a decent enough guy, but he's terrified of the council and refuses to speak up for the kids. Violet, Sunny, and Klaus find couplets they suspect are written by Isadora Quagmire, their missing friend, and hope that she and her brother Duncan are being held by Count Olaf nearby. The town arrests an innocent man, claiming he's Olaf, and the real Count Olaf shows up disguised as a detective. When the fake Olaf is found dead before the townspeople can burn him at the stake, the orphans are accused of his murder and locked up. They manage to escape, and free Duncan and Isadora at the same time, but as a result they become fugitives from the law and now have really nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Ah :( Poor kids.
"The Hostile Hospital" finds the poor Baudelaire orphans on the run after the newspaper erroneously prints that they murdered Count Olaf. They find a group of volunteers known as the VFD (Volunteers Fighting Disease) and think that maybe they're the VFD the Quagmire triplets were referring to (it doesn't take long to realize they aren't). They tag along with the volunteers to a hospital, where they end up working in the Library. They manage to trick Hal, the man in charge of the library (he was not an actual librarian--his organizational skills were atrocious) into leaving his keys behind one night so they can sneak in to see if they can find any files to help them figure out what's going on. They find the last page of a file on the fire that destroyed their house, and it says there might be a survivor! The children are heartened to think one of their parents might still be alive, but unfortunately Esme Squalor catches up to them and manages to snag Violet. Sunny and Klaus get away and formulate a risky plan to rescue her when they discover that Count Olaf plans to cut her head off. They make it, and escape by hiding in the trunk of Count Olaf's car after he burns the hospital down. These poor kids are sure doing a lot of running and escaping.
In "The Carnivorous Carnival" Count Olaf's car finally stops, and the Baudelaires find themselves at a run down carnival in the middle of nowhere. Using disguises from the trunk, they turn themselves into freaks in order to join the carnival's freak show. Count Olaf is consulting Madame Lulu, who is able to miraculously keep telling him where the Baudelaires are. The kids quickly discover she's a fraud, and formulate a plan to escape and take Lulu, whose real name is Olivia, with them. Unfortunately Count Olaf foils their plan when he brings lions to the carnival and announces the newest attraction to draw customers to the fair: he's going to feed freaks to the starving lions Well, great. Olaf ends up kidnapping all three of them as they flee the burning carnival, leaving Klaus and Violet in a caravan he tows with his car but taking Sunny into the car with him and his band of nefarious associates. ( )