Romancing Nancy Drew

Nancy takes on like 8 mysteries in this one. Cute guy with amnesia who apparently escaped the Sea Org? Check. Bearded klepto with rage issues? Check. Hit and run driver? Harpist's missing sister? Ned's raging libido? Hippie with a scorpion fetish trying to sabotage a music festival and screw up Carson's street cred? PTSD? All of the above, thanks!

Gather round and listen to the Nancy Drew/X-Files/LSD crossover you have never in your life wanted. Nancy and her entire entourage head to The Forest to hunt a UFO! They run into a Grizzled Kindly Mountain Guy/Animal Whisperer! Nancy and Ned talk to each other telepathically! It's the most bonkers thing ever.

A very Afterschool Special-y Files adventure featuring scarily aggressive football players, the main guy from Office Space, Edgar Allan Poe's goofy cousin, and the principal from Ferris Bueller.

Big cats in zoos? Boring. Big cats in passenger vehicles? Heck yeah. Nancy and her entourage are investigating the theft of several civets (Babou!) from the River Heights Zoo because George's hot (dumb) crush Owen is prime suspect. Owen is a charisma vacuum. Nancy is the most accurate 18 year old she's been yet for this plot. Also she leaves a villain to potentially be fatally mauled and it's fab....

Nancy is framed! Sadly, she doesn't go on the lam with Ned and end up in a seedy motel room. Some hussy slapped on a wig, borrowed Nancy's name, and bilked some rich idiots in Ned's hometown out of some cash, and Nancy is of course the prime suspect. Bess goes full Spirit Halloween and turns Nancy into River Heights's cattiest reporter. Light B&E! Perp walking! This one has it all!

Nancy heads to Emerson to help the least competent admin, Dean Jarvis, find out who has been stealing a really lowkey dangerous compound from a research lab on campus and runs into an ecofascist maniac who is ready to speedrun a violent police confrontation. It's a lot! Complete with callbacks to Files 8, my villain origin story!

It's Halloween and Ned's working on a marketing project with some VERY dramatic Emerson seniors! They're in River Heights giving out free samples of proto Proactiv and being snippy. Also, Bess falls for one of said seniors before literally falling out of her chair. Nancy, Ned, and George try to find out what KO'd Bess, and of course there's some making out. And pumpkins. Fantasy cast is Ryan Gosli...

Nancy's father asks her to connect with a jeweler, Mr. Moto, who was robbed of an expensive pearl necklace which belongs to a socialite (Paris Hilton). Nancy and Carson end up heading to Japan and are threatened with math riddles! Then they come back and Ned escorts Nancy to a cult party while they're in full prom. It's bonkers and the last of the Mystery Stories (real ones, anyway)!

In which Nancy channels Steve Irwin and hangs out with wildlife. Carson's old college buddy Mr. Gonzalez has fallen for a crypto scam and Nancy and the girls head to Florida to check it out. This one is flat out bonkers. There are also submarines, though, so at least there's that.

In which the lambs are quite loud! Nancy's old friend, whose family owns a pretty big sheep farm, invites Nancy to check out a mysterious parchment picture that her dad recently bought, and then Nancy gets involved in a weird Hitchcock/Sopranos crossover episode featuring human trafficking. So, a normal week for her. Also, Nancy invites her entire entourage to the farm for some undercover work, as...

Nancy takes flying lessons while Bess decides to live out a western romance novel. George is the rodeo clown. Most of the mystery is based on the disappearance of a pilot (Robert Pattinson?) and a weird medallion and a horse theft and a bizarre cloud, and in the end, I blame L. Ron for everything.

Nancy, who should be wildly unqualified for it, is called to help decipher clues leading to a possible treasure related to a long-abandoned indigenous settlement near Las Vegas. Ned, her common law husband, has arranged it since they are super traumatized from his kidnapping in Glowing Eye and need to hang out, and/or chase down clues. The Scientologists living near her, as always, try to mess her...

Ned is missing and Carson has a sidepiece. Nancy is DISTRAUGHT. This book also has the BEST post-kidnapping reunion scene. Hollywood, turn THIS into your next attempt at Nancy Drew media, you cowards.

A very special Nancy Drew Files/Archer crossover! The Drew residence is receiving creepy hangup calls and threats stemming from a man Carson defended 8 years earlier; he was acquitted but the man who was convicted for the crime has just been released--and is claiming innocence. Carson tells Nancy to ABSOLUTELY stay out of it, so she starts investigating immediately. On your Files Bingo card, this...

It's Nancy and Ned's anniversary!!!!! Also Nancy gets entangled in her 16-year-old neighbor Nikki's terrible decision to date an emotionally abusive jerk who winds up dead. This is also the "pilot" for the short-lived River Heights series, introducing a bunch of dramatic high schoolers who Nancy is basically exasperated by, so that tracks. This book is 1000% redeemed by the making out by my OTP, t...

The epic Nancy Drew/Phantom of the Opera crossover event! Nancy is helping Bess sneak into a huge space cowboy movie star’s dressing room during his movie premiere because she had a crush on him when they were in high school together (he’s 3 years older and a total himbo) but things go terribly wrong (not in a sexy way) and Nancy and George have to race to save Bess before the old theater is demol...

Ned is back!!! Nancy’s just-for-this-book-bestie Laurie has fallen for a charismatic former dancer turned DJ who now runs a (booze free???) dance club in River Heights. However, someone is starting trouble at the club and threatening Laurie (Michael Myers????) so Nancy’s entourage shows up to investigate while she snoops and plays waitress (again, Ned is a costume enthusiast). My theory is a littl...

In which Nancy and her entourage head to Mile High (Murder) Club for hang-gliding and glamping. The daughter of one of Carson’s old college friends is running her dad’s Extreme Sports Camp and guests are receiving threats. It’s real bad, y’all. Also Ned is totally absent from the book, so that was the worst too. Plus there’s a Chekhov’s freezer.

Nancy is canonically a witch now. I don’t make the rules. In a weird turn of events, a company wants to build affordable housing (good) but they’re being jerks (bad). Nancy and her friends violate seat belt laws and contract the Bird Flu while saving a Tiger King-y casual apiary from Callous Developers. Also Nancy REALLY wants to help nurse Ned back to health. I really think she has that nurse out...

Aunt Eloise, who is somehow making bank, invites Nancy and her entourage to a cabin near Cooperstown to investigate a mysterious figure who has been spotted in the mist on the water. The figure leads them to a search for a child’s coach (like an 1800s Power Wheels) buried somewhere in the bay. Also, the Jolly Green Normal Sized Bro is haunting the local woods to keep randos away from some vague il...

In which Nancy hunts for Elon Musk, but only catches a Sea Org member! Carson is investigating an eccentric inventor who is using his weird creative genius in two ways: perfecting a murder robot and swindling people by “selling” them land on reservations (of course). Elon has a weird unsettling house surrounded by a moat with water that can catch on fire, staffed by said murderbot. Nancy and Carso...

Carson receives an unsolicited Turkish prayer rug with a secret message woven into the design, asking him to bring a mannequin. Carson’s client Farouk had a Turkish rug shop in town that had a mannequin in the window, so it seems related, and Nancy and her friends set off to find Farouk and the mannequin. Nancy also saves a toddler from drowning in a river, and Bess remains on brand as a perfume e...

Nancy is again in need of enrichment in her enclosure, so a bunch of married swingers take her and her entourage on a ghost busting adventure, to FIVE creepy destinations. The last is a house full of HUMAN (and animal) SKULLS, so they weren’t wrong on that. Ned gets kidnapped and Nancy is nearly intentionally drowned! There’s just a lot going on!!!

In which everyone hits up Padre Island for Spring Break! Nancy’s invited there by her camp buddy Mercedes (Selena Gomez), who is dating disaster himbo Buck (Ryan Hansen), and the Hardys (themselves) decide to crash this tender, hormone-flooded reunion. Ned is there too, and there are SEVERAL make out sessions AND banging opportunities for my OTP, so I am one happy narrator for this pirate treasure...

In which Nancy goes undercover as a candy striper (Ned is VERY INTERESTED in her cute li’l outfit) to discover who has it out for Ned’s doctor friend Trevor (Ryan Gosling with Barbie-movie hair). Trevor’s fiancé April (Pelican Brief era Julia Roberts in one of those bad wigs) is upset because her sick father’s prognosis isn’t great, and then he dies! Did Trevor do it? Was it natural causes? Will w...