A Tangle in Slops

Barlough completes the six-book Western Lights series with this engaging tale. Ada Henslowe, last seen in 2007's Bertram of Buttercross, returns to deceptively pleasant rural Slopshire to aid her young cousin Mary Trefoil, who is in denial about her father's recent death. Mary's distracted uncle Igneus controls the family farm until she comes of age—which she may not live to do, as the shade of Tronda Quickensbog, an enchantress with a grudge against the Trefoils, has been seen by locals, and the creature that killed Mary's father is now stalking Mary. Barlough's prose is skillful and charming as he builds a winding country road of a plot. New and returning readers alike will appreciate this tale and the included children's story, "Ebenezer Cracknut." (Mar.)