A Tangle in Slops — Jeffrey E. Barlough

When Ada Henslowe found herself called to distant Plumley, in Slopshire, to help her little orphaned cousin Mary Trefoil, she had no inkling of the strange adventures that were to follow. For Mary, whose mother had died in giving birth to her, and whose father Magnus, the master of Orkney Farm, had been slain by a wild beast of the marshes, was herself threatened now by the very same creature that had dispatched her father. Why had the monster returned to Plumley? Was its aim, as the servants feared, to eliminate, one by one, the Trefoils of Orkney Farm? Who had command of the beast, and what was his purpose in menacing the family? Or had he some other even more sinister end in view? And what of the apparition in the mossy-green mantle that had been frightening the citizens of Plumley? Was it indeed the ghost of Tronda Quickensbog, wise woman, enchantress, and soothsayer? Was it she who had orchestrated the death of Mary's father, in revenge perhaps for the supposed desecration of her relics which he had unearthed at Orkney Farm? These and other troubling questions Miss Henslowe -- familiar to series readers from her role in fan favorite Bertram of Butter Cross -- will need to resolve if she and the others at Orkney are to thwart a looming danger from centuries past, in this new sixth installment in author Jeffrey E. Barlough's acclaimed Western Lights series of fantasy-mysteries. Also included in the new volume is Ebenezer Crackernut -- the delightful tale of a very bad squirrel, and the author's first Western Lights story for children.