Ending and Beginning Again: Clues in the Shadows: A Molly Mystery by Kathleen Ernst

It's spring of 1945, and although her father has returned from the war in Europe, he is deployed to work with seriously injured soldiers at the local vet hospital and can't seem to shake the sadness he brought home with him.

Molly, too, is weary with the long war: she can hardly remember a time before everyone was absorbed with the war effort--collecting scrap metal, rubber, rags, and even paper, working the third shift at the local aircraft factory as her friend Linda's mother does or volunteering with the Red Cross all day as her own mother does. Although the war in Europe seems to be winding down, rationing is tighter than ever, and Molly finds it hard to find the enthusiasm she once had for collecting paper scraps.

Still, when the school announces that a new award, the Eisenhower Medal, will go to the local student who collects the most paper, Molly decides to go for it, especially when her angry neighbor Ronnie Vanko taunts the girls that he will beat them out for the prize. But when Molly finds her diligently collected stack of papers, stashed in the garden shed, scattered and possibly pilfered, she and her friends decide to play Nancy Drew and stake out their stashes of paper in hopes of catching the thief. After several chilly nights waiting with a flashlight, however, Molly succeeds in catching only her neighbor, old Mrs.Petroski, who is out late, she claims, searching for her missing cat Marmalade.

Underneath the relief at the war's possible end, everyone seems to have their own war-induced problems, and even as the town celebrates the victory in Europe, Molly's visits to the local veterans' hospital where her dad works with soldiers suffering from "battle fatigue" reveal secrets and fears that she is now only beginning to understand. And when she finally catches the "Paper Prowler" in her own shed, she learns that there are secret fears and needs right next door that she has never guessed before.

Molly looked up at her parents. "Wars don't really end when the shooting stops, do they?"

Kathleen Ernst's latest in American Girls Molly Mystery series, Clues in the Shadows: A Molly Mystery (American Girl Mysteries) brings the personal history of the World War II home front a bit closer to young readers, as Molly McIntyre sees her friends' mothers, some gladly, some reluctantly, giving up their war industry jobs and men returning from service trying to find a place in a world and economy which is far different from the one they left in 1942. The times they are alway a-changing, and this notable historical fiction series does an excellent job in showing how earlier American girls dealt with the changes in their own times.

Nancy Drew Bares All: Confessions of a Teen Sleuth: A Parody by Chelsea Cain

"If you are reading this, then I am gone and this manuscript, per my instructions, has been delivered to the writer Chelsea Cain.. ."

So begins Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, Cain's sly and delicious parody of the Nancy Drew series. Cain doesn't just do a highly humorous take-off on the original teen sleuth stories, in which Nancy and Frank Hardy share a hot kiss or two while being held captive above a speakeasy, but takes Nancy forward into an old age in which she is still torn between her two teen loves--the steady companionship of her "special friend," Ned Nickerson, and her dangerous, secret attraction to the darkly handsome and daring Frank Hardy.

In Cain's spoofy memoir, we learn how Nancy's Bryn Mawr roommate, the chubby and envious Carolyn Keene, made her career from a series of unauthorized fictionalized stories about Nancy Drew's teen years. We learn that Nancy went AWOL from her marriage to Ned to follow Frank into a daring rescue of his brother Joe Hardy from Nazi captors, where the two were forced to hide overnight in a romantic hayloft. We also learn than the nurse-cum-sleuth Cherry Ames continued to be Nancy's nemesis as she ghost-writes her own mystery series and shamelessly competes for attention in a post-popular series world.

As she ages beyond middle age, Nancy faces the usual struggle to remain "slim and attractive," eventually forced to select her "slimming skirts" from those with concealed elastic backs. Still, she tints her hair in its original Titian, and styles it and applies tasteful cosmetics before taking on every case. Although she and Ned divorce, they come together again for a few years of "travel and romance" before Ned's death, while Nancy solves "The Mystery of the Haunted Cruise Ship, 1985. Nancy then attends a New York publisher's bash for Carolyn Keene, where Nancy meaningfully inscribes a copy of The Hidden Staircase for Carolyn:

"For Carolyn,
Who made my whole life different. THANK YOU.
XO,
Nancy Drew"

It is only while writing her memoirs that Nancy recalls a mysterious collision with a young man on her way to meet with Carolyn Keene. Checking the perfectly coordinated handbag she was carrying that night, Nancy finds a message:

"7000 Calle Noche, Mexico City. If you are looking for a mystery."

Taking time only to rent her River Heights home to two pretty blonde twins from Sweet Valley, California, Nancy catches the next flight to Mexico City and at 7000 Calle Noche finds, of course, Frank Hardy, who asks her to join him.

"It's big, Nancy, really big," he responded. The biggest adventure yet. All the old teen sleuths are being called up. Tom Swift is waiting in the Sky Queen to take us abroad."

"For now," [thinks Nancy]," "all I knew is that it felt good to be a sleuth again. And Tom Swift could wait for a little while. Frank and I had some catching up to do."

For more nostalgic Nancy reading, take a look at Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking, The Movie Star Mystery, and Still Sleuthing.