The Secret of Shadow Ranch is the fifth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories

Nancy Drew Mystery Stories

The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories was the long-running "main" Nancy Drew series, published between 1930 and 2003. Initially, titles were published by Grosset & Dunlap, but with #57 publication switched to Simon & Schuster. Most people consider these first 56 to be the original series and consider the...

 series. It was first published in 1931 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene

Carolyn Keene

Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym of the authors of the Nancy Drew mystery stories and The Dana Girls mystery stories, both produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate...

, and was ghostwritten by Mildred Wirt Benson. This book, as of 2001, ranks 50 on the list of All-Time Bestselling Children's Books, according to Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

, with 2,347,750 sales since 1931.

Plot summary - 1931 edition

This story serves as an introduction to Nancy's friends, Elizabeth "Bess" Marvin and George Fayne, cousins who are as different from each other as night and day. They, along with another of their cousins, Alice Regor, travel with Nancy to Arizona, where the cousins' aunt attempts to keep up a ranch she received as payment of a debt. Nancy reunites Alice with her long-lost artist father, who is suffering from amnesia. She also uncovers the mystery behind why an old mountain woman is guardian of a beautiful young girl, all the while enjoying mountain life, including horseback riding, a flash flood, being lost in the mountains overnight, and a dangerous mountain lion.

1965 revision

The story takes place in Arizona, and still features Alice Regor's subplot, but otherwise bears little in common to the original story. The title changed to The Secret of Shadow Ranch, Nancy travels with her friends Bess and George to Arizona, and while the mystery of Alice Regor's father was kept for the revision, Nancy also tries to solve two other mysteries: Why is a phantom horse haunting the ranch, and what happened to the treasure promised by Dirk Valentine, legendary Old West outlaw, to his estranged sweetheart, one of the original residents of the ranch? This book is filled with action and local color, including a square dance, and serves as something of a travelogue

Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...

. It also introduces a theme common in Nancy Drew books after 1950, an ill-fated romance from another historical era. The girls find diversion with attractive young men at the ranch and in the community, and are already skilled with horses and western life.

Artwork

Russell H. Tandy

Russell H. Tandy

Russell H. Tandy was an American illustrator, best known for his cover art for early editions of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series.Tandy was a friend of Edward Stratemeyer, whose syndicate created several series of books for young readers...

 illustrated the original dust jacket and internal illustrations, and the frontispiece. In 1950, Bill Gillies revised the cover art, which featured Nancy on a rearing horse. The art was revised for the new story in 1965, this time by Rudy Nappi, and featuring the phantom horse.

Continuity Error

• Though Ned Nickerson
  Ned Nickerson
  Ned Nickerson is a fictional character in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series written under the collective pseudonym "Carolyn Keene". Ned is often referred to as Nancy Drew's boyfriend...
  
   is mentioned in passing in this book as being in Europe, Nancy doesn't actually meet Ned until two books later. This mistake was added when the books were revised.

Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries: Shadow Ranch

Sometime in early 2011, interactive entertainment developer, Her Interactive

Her Interactive

Her Interactive is the leading mystery-maker and pioneer of fun and inspiring interactive entertainment. The company, with 24 awards to its name, designs, develops and publishes high-quality, mystery adventure games and apps, and is the world leader in the mystery games category. Her Interactive's...

, released an app called Shadow Ranch under their new subseries of Nancy Drew games entitled Mobile Mysteries. Shadow Ranch is a story-based gamebook app with the book aspect of it being the actual text of the Shadow Ranch novel and the game aspect of it has minigames within the story and shows the voices and screenshots of characters and locations from the actual The Secret of Shadow Ranch (video game). Shadow Ranch is available only for the iPad

IPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

, iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

, and iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

, priced at $4.99 for the iPad and $1.99 for the iPhone and iPod Touch.