What to Read Next If You Love Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys

Let’s face it: Few things are as fun as racing to put together the clues before your favorite intrepid detective solves the case. We think these books make worthy follow-ups (or lead ups!) to the adventures of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.

what to read next if you love Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys

Older Nancy Drew fans may find the dark, twisty, supernatural TV version of the classic stories a lot of fun — I did!

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys set the standard for grade-school mysteries, but even with all those titles in the series, you may reach a point when you need something more. These mysteries — from picture books to adult novels — also ask you, the reader, to put together the clues to solve the case, using your eye for details and creative problem-solving abilities. Most of these are part of a series, since part of the fun of the Drew-Hardy world is the luxuriously long list of titles.

Your next picture book

Alphabet Mystery by Audrey Wood

In Alphabet Mystery by Audrey Wood, the lowercase letters must team up to find little x, who’s gone missing just before his mom’s big birthday bash. This is a great book for practicing letter recognition, since you’ll be hunting for all the letters on every page — but it’s not a great learning-the-alphabet-in-order book because the letters don’t appear in order. It’s a fun picture book mystery, though, with a sweet message about how we may be more important than we realize — even if it doesn’t always feel that way.


Your next chapter book

Mudshark by Gary Paulsen

Mudshark by Gary Paulsen introduces Mudshark, a kid whose reputation as a great problem solver is challenged by a case of disappearing erasers at his school. He’s also got unexpected competition — in the form of a librarian’s apparently psychic pet parrot. (This one should maybe go on an “if you loved Encyclopedia Brown” reading list, too, because it does a similar vibe with lots of small episodic mysteries around the bigger one.)


Your next readaloud

Sammy Keys and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin Van Draanen

Sammy Keys and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin Van Draanen kicks off a mystery series about a 12-year-old detective who finds trouble wherever she goes. In this book, Sammy, who lives with her grandmother in a seniors-only complex, spies a thief in action. Unfortunately, the thief sees her, too. So Sammy does what any intrepid kid detective would do — she waves at the thief. Smart, quick-thinking Sammy is always on the case. A lot of mysteries for kids lean into the formulaic, and that’s fine, but this Edgar-award winning series has some genuinely surprising plot twists.


 Your next teen read

Virals by Kathy Reichs

Virals by Kathy Reichs starts another series, when sci-phile teens led by Tory Brennan rescue a dog from a medical testing facility, kicking off a chain of events that will put them hot on the trail of a not-so-cold case and launch a surprising new phase of their lives. This series comes from the author of the definitely-for-adults Bones series — the protagonist is Temperance Brennan’s niece and has definitely learned a thing or two from her forensic anthropologist aunt. (Sometimes maybe unbelievably a lot? But also we all know that when kids are genuinely obsessed with something, they can become in-depth experts, so I’ll allow it.)


 Your next grown-up book

The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters is the first book in the delightful Amelia Peabody mysteries, in which an eternally curious 19th-century spinster decides to take her inheritance to Egypt, where she falls in love with Egyptology and becomes caught up in an old-fashioned whodunnit. Amelia’s romance with a grumpy amateur archaeologist has some entertaining moments, but it’s the mystery — set in an Egyptian dig site and featuring all kinds of fascinating period archaeological details — that makes this first-in-the-series book a great follow-up to Nancy Drew.


Amy Sharony

Amy Sharony is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.

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