Nancy Clue and Cherry Aimless

Nurse Cherry Aimless's first vacation from her hectic career in a big-city hospital takes her to visit her spinster Aunt Gertrude in thrilling San Francisco. Wistfully trading her starched white cap and dress for a bright yellow poplin frock with a flared skirt, young Cherry takes to the highway, never imagining the gay adventures that await her. Imagine her surprise to learn that Aunt Gertrude has been kidnapped! Armed only with the contents of her purse, and with the help of new chums, Cherry must save her aunt.

The sequel to The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse is another hoot, a lampooning of girls' fiction of the past full of hapless, do-gooding detectives with "keen sleuthing abilities, up-to-the-minute fashion sense, and gracious finishing-school manners". Girlfriend finds our hapless heroine, Nancy Clue, racing home to River Depths, Illinois, to confess the murder of her father, prominent attorney Carson Clue; expose the terrible truth about him; and free Hannah Gruel, the selfless housekeeper who has shouldered the blame.

With their fearless crime-fighting, good manners, and manly fashion sense, the Hardly boys are the pride of Feyport, Illinois. In A Ghost in the Closet, dark-haired, muscular Frank and his lovable kid brother, Joe, return from a gay trip to Europe to find that their parents - world-famous detective Fennel P. Hardly and his wife, Mrs. Hardly - have been kidnapped! Even worse, so have six poodles from the Lake Merrimen Dog Show! Pals Nancy Clue, Cherry Aimless, R.N., and Police Detective Jackie Jones help the Hardly boys track down the criminals.