Count Karlstein by Philip PullmanKnopf, 1998 (originally Chatto & Windus, 1982)

So pleasingly fast-paced and funny. Hildi Kelmar lives in a village in the Swiss Alps, and works as a maid at Castle Karlstein. Her employer, Count Karlstein, is the guardian of his two orphaned English nieces and a thoroughly nasty individual, the sort who goes in for pacts with demons. It’s nearly All Souls’ Eve, which means the demon huntsman will soon be on the prowl: and this year, he’ll have human prey. There’s not much surprise in the plot of this book, but that’s part of what’s pleasing: the familiar logic of it. The story is narrated in bits and pieces, some of it by Hildi and some by others: the orphaned English nieces (who read Gothic romances like The Mysteries of Udolpho and fancy themselves heroines), their no-nonsense former schoolteacher, a bumbling coachman, a clever mountebank, an inept police sergeant. Pullman, as always, writes wonderfully: I stayed up past my bedtime to finish reading!