Presentations, Nancy Drew 95th Anniversary Convention.

Toledo [OH] Public Library, which hosts the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection, has posted videos from the April 2025 Nancy Drew 95th Anniversary Convention, including the following:

• Fisher, founder of the Nancy Drew Sleuths group, discusses "95 Years of Nancy Drew" 

• Fisher on collecting Nancy Drew 

• Stacia Deutsch, who has written under the Nancy Drew pseudonym Carolyn Keene 

• Erika Head on using Nancy Drew in the classroom 

The Hardy Boys return.

Just out from Dover Publications: books 4 and 5 in the Hardy Boys series—The Missing Chums (orig publ 1928; Frank and Joe pursue  robbers and kidnappers) and Hunting for Hidden Gold (orig publ. 1928; Frank and Joe go in aid of their injured father and locate an abandoned mine). They join The Tower Treasure (book 1, 1927), The House on the Cliff (book 2, 1927), and The Secret of the Old Mill (book 3, 1927). Canadian journalist Leslie McFarlane wrote these books as well as a memoir, Ghost of the Hardy Boys.

New mystery audiobooks from Librivox.

Librivox, which marshals volunteer readers to produce free audiobooks of works in the public domain, has some new mystery-related offerings:

• A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott
  (an Alcott "blood and thunder" tale)
• The Tower Treasure by Frankin W. Dixon (the Hardy Boys debut)
  
• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (man with an aristocratic title claim is murdered)
  
• The Unholy Three by Tod Robbins (carnival performers become criminals)
  
• Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter's brother is accused of murder)
  
• Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter looks into a potential murder)
  
• The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace (cop and prosecutor chase a dastardly secret society)

Want to volunteer as a reader? Visit this webpage. 

Forever chums.

The Hardy Boys
Detective Handbook (1959)

Edward Stratemeyer. NYPL

The Penn Books Center blog focuses on the Hardy Boys series, including the original series from the Stratemeyer Syndicate and follow-up series such as the Hardy Boys Casefiles, Hardy Boys Adventures, and Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers. You also can find out about the Hardy Boys book that is the most rare.

"Women & crime fiction" resource, UF Tampa Libraries

Margaret Lewis's biography of Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters

To accompany the U-Florida course Lit 4386, the Special Collections of the UF–Tampa Libraries has assembled a "Women & Crime Fiction" online exhibition featuring mystery highlights of its collection that focus on female authors, female detectives, femme fatales, and female victims. Some of the works featured are by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Vera Caspary, Lillian de la Torre, Anna Katharine Green, Margaret Millar, Ellis Peters, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Unusual items include The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, which offers Captain Kirk as detective, and an April 1960 letter from Columbia University student Leigh Marlowe to mystery author Baynard Kendrick related to her study of villains.

Hardy Boys author Leslie McFarlane recalled.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. remembers the death on September 6, 1977, of highly successful Canadian author Leslie McFarlane with this 1972 interview; he wrote some of the Hardy Boys and the Dana Girls mysteries, among other works.

Below: Target Berlin (1944), with a script by Leslie McFarlane.

Fond of Freddy and friends.

The Overlook Press blog notes that Nick Kristof, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, has selected the Best Kids Books Ever, including Freddy the Detective (1932) by Walter R. Brooks, the Hardy Boys by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and the Alex Rider series by Foyle's War creator Anthony Horowitz ("things keep exploding in a very satisfying way").

Happy birthday, Edward Stratemeyer.

Edward Stratemeyer, creator of the Stratemeyer Syndicate that gave us Tom Swift (who bears some similarity to aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss), the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and many other books with adventurous young people, was born today in 1862. A list of some of the syndicate pseudonyms follows at the bottom of this post.*

Stratemeyer began his career at the dime novel publisher Street & Smith as a writer and editor, creating the popular "Rover Boys" series in 1899. He began the syndicate in 1905, figuring out that "house names" plus armies of ghostwriters could spell profit. Peak periods for the syndicate were between 1912 and 1917 and 1922 and 1927, when it was producing approximately 50 series. Stratemeyer died in 1930, and the syndicate was taken over by his daughters, Harriet Adams and Edna Squier, and in time by Adams alone. Gradually, only the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew remained and were sold to Simon & Schuster after Adams's death in 1982. The syndicate records are now found in the New York Public Library.

*Nick Carter; Alice B. Emerson; Franklin W. Dixon; Mabel C. Hawley; Carolyn Keene, Arthur M. Winfield; Ralph Bonehill; Manager Henry Abbott; Horatio Alger, Jr.; Philip A. Alyer; P. T. Barnum, Jr.; Theodore Barnum; Emerson Bell; Captain Ralph Bonehill; Franklin Calkins; Louis Charles; Jim Daly; Theodore Edison; Julia Edwards; Albert Lee Ford; Ralph Hamilton; Hal Harkaway; Harvey Hicks; Captain Lew James; Peter Pad; Ned St. Meyer; E. Ward Strayer; Ed Ward; Tom Ward; Edna Winfield; Nat Woods; Oliver Optic; Clarence Young; Roy Rockwood