Vans & Villains: Nancy Drew Diaries, cartea 27
Autor Carolyn Keeneen Limba Engleză Paperback – 26 feb 2026 – vârsta până la 12 ani
When George wins an exciting contest from her favorite van life influencers to transport their camper van from Chicago to Los Angeles, she naturally invites Nancy and Bess along to live out her van life fantasies for seven days.
But things quickly go sideways for the girls, from bad weather to mechanical problems, leading to personality clashes in a small, closed space. Worse yet, Nancy feels like someone is following them. Could someone be trying to sabotage the trip? Or is Nancy so used to solving mysteries that she’s starting to see villains where there are none?
Nancy had better figure it out quickly if their road trip—and their friendship—is going to survive the chaos.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781665988049
ISBN-10: 1665988045
Pagini: 208
Ilustrații: f-c gloss uv cvr w- no sfx
Dimensiuni: 130 x 194 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.15 kg
Editura: Aladdin
Colecția Aladdin
Seria Nancy Drew Diaries
ISBN-10: 1665988045
Pagini: 208
Ilustrații: f-c gloss uv cvr w- no sfx
Dimensiuni: 130 x 194 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.15 kg
Editura: Aladdin
Colecția Aladdin
Seria Nancy Drew Diaries
Notă biografică
Carolyn Keene is the author of the ever-popular Nancy Drew books.
Extras
Chapter One: Big NewsCHAPTER ONE ![]()
Big News
“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK George wants to talk to us about?” my friend Bess asked with a big grin, plopping down in the passenger seat of my car. It was a sunny afternoon a few days before a school break, the kind of day that feels ripe with possibilities. “New crush or new video game?”
I gave her a wry smile. George is a techie and loves gaming, but I wasn’t sure that was the source of her GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW I HAVE BIG NEWS!!! text to Bess and me just a half hour before. I was just hoping it was good big news.
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly.
“Maybe she dyed her hair?” Bess wondered as I pulled back out of her driveway. “She’s always talking about going blue, but I never thought she’d do it…”
Luckily, George lives pretty close to Bess, who just happens to be her cousin. (Yep, my two BFFs are related.) So it was only about five minutes later that we pulled into George’s driveway and piled out. The side door was open, as always, so Bess and I plowed in, entering the kitchen and calling, “George? What’s the big news?” as we grabbed a few graham crackers out of the box on the counter.
“In the study!” George’s voice called.
Munching crackers, we wandered through the living room and into the small, book-lined room, where George sat in front of her laptop, a huge smile on her face.
“Okay, cuz, what is it?” Bess demanded. “I was writing an outline for my paper. This better be big!”
George waved a hand. “Sorry, cuz, I know you’re busy with that poetry class. But I promise you, this is big! It’s huge, honestly!”
Bess examined her cousin. “Well, it’s not your hair.”
George rolled her eyes. Her hair was the same dark bob she always wore. “Only you would hear ‘life-changing news’ and think, ‘She must have changed her hair.’?”
The truth was, it had seemed plausible to me, too. George had been admiring the blue streaks in her cousin Veronica’s hair for months. But now I was at a total loss.
“Tell us, George!” I urged. “It’s not like you to freak out like this. It must be something important!”
George turned to me, beaming. Then she grabbed her laptop and turned it around, hitting the mouse button.
She was on Vidz, the video-sharing social media site. Onscreen, a pretty blond woman in a slightly dented straw hat and a boho dress was resting her hand on the shoulder of a guy with long brown hair and a bushy beard. They were sitting at a table in a small space, and behind them, a window showed a gorgeous desert vista.
“Soooo,” the woman said, “as you guys know, Matt and I have been watching all of your entry videos to decide who is the perfect person to drive our van from Chicago to LA.”
Bess turned to George, a crinkle forming between her eyebrows. “Van?” she asked. “What van?”
“Just watch,” George commanded, pointing at the screen.
“Aaaaand,” the man, Matt, added with a mischievous grin, “I think Sammy and I have found a winner!”
“There were lots of great entries,” Sammy went on. “You guys are so creative! And honestly, so many of you are so excited to try van life, we really encourage you all to find a way—even if it’s just renting an RV for a week!”
“Van life?” Bess asked. “What’s that?”
But actually, gears were starting to turn in my mind. I was remembering a conversation I’d had with George over smoothies a few weeks back. She’d shown me her phone, scrolling through a bunch of Vidz posts featuring beautiful landscapes, dreamy sunsets, and photos of couples snuggling close beside roaring fires.
“Doesn’t that look amazing?” she’d asked me. “Imagine being able to live wherever you want. No commute, few possessions. Cooking your meals outside. Imagine how free you’d feel. They call it #vanlife…”
At the time, I think I asked, “But where do they go to the bathroom?” George had scowled and changed the subject. I wrote it off as George fantasizing about getting away from her family’s basement-cleaning project, which had been in full swing that weekend. But… did this have something to do with those posts?
“Keep watching,” George said now, nodding at the screen.
“Anyway,” Matt said, “the winner my lovely wife and I chose is…”
He started drumming on a table in front of him. Sammy joined in.
“Oh, just tell us!” Bess cried.
“George Fayne!” the couple in the video shouted in unison.
“What?” Bess and I both cried in surprise, looking at George.
George nodded to the screen, beaming. “I know! Check it out.”
Matt and Sammy had stood up and were now aiming the camera around what looked like an incredibly small—like, closet-sized—studio apartment. Not a studio apartment, I realized quickly. This must be their van! “All of this will be yours, George!” Sammy announced with a huge grin.
There was a double bed wedged against a wide window with curtains. A tiny bathroom with a doll-sized, low toilet within. And a small kitchen, with a teeny fridge, stove, oven, microwave, and what looked like a high-end espresso machine. The camera swerved to the left, and we saw a small sitting area, two chairs facing a fold-out table.
The van had everything you would need to live in it for a long time. Because that was what George had won: the opportunity to live in this van while she drove it from Chicago to LA.
Because getting to live in a van was a good thing?
“All we ask,” Sammy went on, “is that you bring a friend or two and document your whole trip. All the Matt and Sammy subscribers will love seeing a newbie fall in love with van life! While we spend some quality time with our families in Chicago, you’ll be living your best van life: stopping at some super-fun roadside attractions and traveling through some of the most gorgeous scenery this country has to offer! When you reach LA, you’ll drop the van off for service with our favorite van technician, who first outfitted her for us, and we’ll cover all your travel back to Chicago. Look out for an email with all the deets, George! And have an amazing time!”
George hit the Pause button and looked up at us. Her face was hopeful now. It was clear that she thought getting to live in a van was a very, very good thing. “You guys will come with me, won’t you?” she asked.
“What?” Bess asked.
“Are you serious?” I added. “To live in the van with you? All three of us in that space?”
George nodded eagerly. “It’s bigger than it looks!”
Bess groaned. “I don’t think it is, cuz.”
As George frowned at her, I shook my head. “When is this even supposed to be?”
“Oh, you have time to prepare—don’t worry,” George said with a shrug. “We would leave on Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Bess cried. It was Thursday.
“How long would we be gone?” I asked. As it happened, I didn’t have any plans next week aside from a tentative date with my boyfriend, Ned, and a couch-shopping trip with my dad. Both could be rescheduled without a problem. But that didn’t mean I was sure about this. “And… where would we be going, exactly?”
George’s eyes lit up. “We’d be gone for a week,” she said. “And it’s just like Matt and Sammy told us—we’d have this incredible itinerary driving through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, on into Nevada, and then California. We’d travel through Denver and Las Vegas, but mostly it’s just a wild landscape. You know: the sunset, a fire, and our van! Can you imagine how much fun we’ll have?”
“What about… plumbing?” Bess asked, looking very unthrilled. “Are we not going to shower for a week? What if we have to go to the bathroom?”
George shook her head. “Cuz, you saw there’s a toilet in the van, and there’s an outdoor solar shower you can use. But we’ll mostly be staying in campgrounds where they will have bathhouses, too.”
Bess turned to me, looking horrified. “What is that toilet even hooked up to?” she asked.
“I’m guessing it’s a compost toilet,” I replied. “You know, a toilet that turns waste into compost.”
“Exactly,” George said. “And we have to empty it every so often, but let’s not worry about that now. Bess, van life is no harder than camping, and you go camping all the time.”
“?‘All the time’ is an exaggeration,” Bess retorted. “And I don’t go camping for seven days. I’m not some kind of survivalist! Besides, what about my poetry class, George? The university isn’t on break next week, so I have my last class on Monday. And I have my big paper on Wordsworth due next week.”
Bess was taking a poetry class at River Heights University, the same school my boyfriend, Ned, goes to. She’d recently become interested in songwriting and thought that learning more about poetry might help her write lyrics. She was also earning college credit she could use later, and she’d ended up really loving the class too. I looked at George curiously. Would that mean Bess couldn’t go—and I’d end up accompanying George alone?
Did I even want to go? I’m usually up for an adventure, but I would never go camping for more than two days either. I like the outdoors, but I also like my memory foam mattress and soaker tub.
George nodded patiently. “I know, Bess, and I know how important that class is to you. I looked it up online, and you’re allowed to attend lectures via video conference, aren’t you?”
Bess wrinkled her nose. “I guess? I’ve always gone in person.”
“And you could be working on your paper on the road,” George went on. “The van has electricity, and I checked: All the campgrounds on the itinerary offer Wi-Fi. So you can sign in to your class on Monday, before we leave the campground. And then you can be working on your paper whenever you need—there’ll be a lot of downtime while we’re driving—and you can turn it in electronically while we’re at a campground.”
Bess sighed, then looked at me. “What do you think, Nance?” she asked. “Does this sound ridiculous to you?”
“Kind of,” I admitted. “But… I’m not saying no yet.” I turned to the prizewinner. “How important is this to you, George?”
George’s eyes widened as she leaned toward us. “Soooooooo important, you guys,” she said earnestly. “I know this might seem like a new interest to you, but it’s something I’m really excited about. If I like these seven days, maybe I would start thinking about saving up for a van or RV. Matt and Sammy have this amazing life!”
“Actually, I remember you mentioning it a few weeks ago,” I admitted. “I just—didn’t realize how serious you were, I guess?”
“How expensive are these vans?” Bess asked. “Like, how valuable is this prize?”
“They’re really expensive,” George replied. “Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It costs a lot to outfit a van to make it livable year-round. You can save a little money doing it yourself, but… it’s a little house, basically.”
“So this might be your only shot,” Bess said. “At trying van life, I mean.”
George nodded. “I’m too young to rent an RV. So yeah. This is kind of a huge opportunity.”
Bess looked at me. I stared back at her. An understanding seemed to pass between us. I could feel clearly that neither one of us was terribly excited about this. I love traveling, but given a week to explore a new place, I would be flying and staying in a nice hotel with a pool, thank you very much. And Bess likes the occasional camping trip, but she likes her creature comforts, too. But: We both love George to bits. And George is always there for us and never asks for much. If it was her dream come true to drive a camper van from Chicago to Los Angeles, and she needed Bess and me to do it…
“Okay,” I said, at the same time Bess turned to George and announced, “We’re in.”
George pushed her laptop away and leaped up to hug us.
“You guys!” she cried, reaching out to pull us both close. “I knew I could count on you! And I promise we’ll have the best time. I’ve been doing a lot of research! I’m going to make this a super-smooth trip for all of us!”
Bess raised an eyebrow at me over George’s back, but I pretended not to see. I was feeling pretty trepidatious about this “van life” too. No matter how much three people liked or loved one another, was it possible to live in a tiny van for seven days and have it all go “super smooth”?
But I was going to give this my best shot—for George. “Road trip!” I yelled excitedly.
“Road trip!” George shouted back, hugging us harder.
“Road trip!” Bess called, shaking her head. “I’ll start making a playlist, guys.”
“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK George wants to talk to us about?” my friend Bess asked with a big grin, plopping down in the passenger seat of my car. It was a sunny afternoon a few days before a school break, the kind of day that feels ripe with possibilities. “New crush or new video game?”
I gave her a wry smile. George is a techie and loves gaming, but I wasn’t sure that was the source of her GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW I HAVE BIG NEWS!!! text to Bess and me just a half hour before. I was just hoping it was good big news.
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly.
“Maybe she dyed her hair?” Bess wondered as I pulled back out of her driveway. “She’s always talking about going blue, but I never thought she’d do it…”
Luckily, George lives pretty close to Bess, who just happens to be her cousin. (Yep, my two BFFs are related.) So it was only about five minutes later that we pulled into George’s driveway and piled out. The side door was open, as always, so Bess and I plowed in, entering the kitchen and calling, “George? What’s the big news?” as we grabbed a few graham crackers out of the box on the counter.
“In the study!” George’s voice called.
Munching crackers, we wandered through the living room and into the small, book-lined room, where George sat in front of her laptop, a huge smile on her face.
“Okay, cuz, what is it?” Bess demanded. “I was writing an outline for my paper. This better be big!”
George waved a hand. “Sorry, cuz, I know you’re busy with that poetry class. But I promise you, this is big! It’s huge, honestly!”
Bess examined her cousin. “Well, it’s not your hair.”
George rolled her eyes. Her hair was the same dark bob she always wore. “Only you would hear ‘life-changing news’ and think, ‘She must have changed her hair.’?”
The truth was, it had seemed plausible to me, too. George had been admiring the blue streaks in her cousin Veronica’s hair for months. But now I was at a total loss.
“Tell us, George!” I urged. “It’s not like you to freak out like this. It must be something important!”
George turned to me, beaming. Then she grabbed her laptop and turned it around, hitting the mouse button.
She was on Vidz, the video-sharing social media site. Onscreen, a pretty blond woman in a slightly dented straw hat and a boho dress was resting her hand on the shoulder of a guy with long brown hair and a bushy beard. They were sitting at a table in a small space, and behind them, a window showed a gorgeous desert vista.
“Soooo,” the woman said, “as you guys know, Matt and I have been watching all of your entry videos to decide who is the perfect person to drive our van from Chicago to LA.”
Bess turned to George, a crinkle forming between her eyebrows. “Van?” she asked. “What van?”
“Just watch,” George commanded, pointing at the screen.
“Aaaaand,” the man, Matt, added with a mischievous grin, “I think Sammy and I have found a winner!”
“There were lots of great entries,” Sammy went on. “You guys are so creative! And honestly, so many of you are so excited to try van life, we really encourage you all to find a way—even if it’s just renting an RV for a week!”
“Van life?” Bess asked. “What’s that?”
But actually, gears were starting to turn in my mind. I was remembering a conversation I’d had with George over smoothies a few weeks back. She’d shown me her phone, scrolling through a bunch of Vidz posts featuring beautiful landscapes, dreamy sunsets, and photos of couples snuggling close beside roaring fires.
“Doesn’t that look amazing?” she’d asked me. “Imagine being able to live wherever you want. No commute, few possessions. Cooking your meals outside. Imagine how free you’d feel. They call it #vanlife…”
At the time, I think I asked, “But where do they go to the bathroom?” George had scowled and changed the subject. I wrote it off as George fantasizing about getting away from her family’s basement-cleaning project, which had been in full swing that weekend. But… did this have something to do with those posts?
“Keep watching,” George said now, nodding at the screen.
“Anyway,” Matt said, “the winner my lovely wife and I chose is…”
He started drumming on a table in front of him. Sammy joined in.
“Oh, just tell us!” Bess cried.
“George Fayne!” the couple in the video shouted in unison.
“What?” Bess and I both cried in surprise, looking at George.
George nodded to the screen, beaming. “I know! Check it out.”
Matt and Sammy had stood up and were now aiming the camera around what looked like an incredibly small—like, closet-sized—studio apartment. Not a studio apartment, I realized quickly. This must be their van! “All of this will be yours, George!” Sammy announced with a huge grin.
There was a double bed wedged against a wide window with curtains. A tiny bathroom with a doll-sized, low toilet within. And a small kitchen, with a teeny fridge, stove, oven, microwave, and what looked like a high-end espresso machine. The camera swerved to the left, and we saw a small sitting area, two chairs facing a fold-out table.
The van had everything you would need to live in it for a long time. Because that was what George had won: the opportunity to live in this van while she drove it from Chicago to LA.
Because getting to live in a van was a good thing?
“All we ask,” Sammy went on, “is that you bring a friend or two and document your whole trip. All the Matt and Sammy subscribers will love seeing a newbie fall in love with van life! While we spend some quality time with our families in Chicago, you’ll be living your best van life: stopping at some super-fun roadside attractions and traveling through some of the most gorgeous scenery this country has to offer! When you reach LA, you’ll drop the van off for service with our favorite van technician, who first outfitted her for us, and we’ll cover all your travel back to Chicago. Look out for an email with all the deets, George! And have an amazing time!”
George hit the Pause button and looked up at us. Her face was hopeful now. It was clear that she thought getting to live in a van was a very, very good thing. “You guys will come with me, won’t you?” she asked.
“What?” Bess asked.
“Are you serious?” I added. “To live in the van with you? All three of us in that space?”
George nodded eagerly. “It’s bigger than it looks!”
Bess groaned. “I don’t think it is, cuz.”
As George frowned at her, I shook my head. “When is this even supposed to be?”
“Oh, you have time to prepare—don’t worry,” George said with a shrug. “We would leave on Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Bess cried. It was Thursday.
“How long would we be gone?” I asked. As it happened, I didn’t have any plans next week aside from a tentative date with my boyfriend, Ned, and a couch-shopping trip with my dad. Both could be rescheduled without a problem. But that didn’t mean I was sure about this. “And… where would we be going, exactly?”
George’s eyes lit up. “We’d be gone for a week,” she said. “And it’s just like Matt and Sammy told us—we’d have this incredible itinerary driving through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, on into Nevada, and then California. We’d travel through Denver and Las Vegas, but mostly it’s just a wild landscape. You know: the sunset, a fire, and our van! Can you imagine how much fun we’ll have?”
“What about… plumbing?” Bess asked, looking very unthrilled. “Are we not going to shower for a week? What if we have to go to the bathroom?”
George shook her head. “Cuz, you saw there’s a toilet in the van, and there’s an outdoor solar shower you can use. But we’ll mostly be staying in campgrounds where they will have bathhouses, too.”
Bess turned to me, looking horrified. “What is that toilet even hooked up to?” she asked.
“I’m guessing it’s a compost toilet,” I replied. “You know, a toilet that turns waste into compost.”
“Exactly,” George said. “And we have to empty it every so often, but let’s not worry about that now. Bess, van life is no harder than camping, and you go camping all the time.”
“?‘All the time’ is an exaggeration,” Bess retorted. “And I don’t go camping for seven days. I’m not some kind of survivalist! Besides, what about my poetry class, George? The university isn’t on break next week, so I have my last class on Monday. And I have my big paper on Wordsworth due next week.”
Bess was taking a poetry class at River Heights University, the same school my boyfriend, Ned, goes to. She’d recently become interested in songwriting and thought that learning more about poetry might help her write lyrics. She was also earning college credit she could use later, and she’d ended up really loving the class too. I looked at George curiously. Would that mean Bess couldn’t go—and I’d end up accompanying George alone?
Did I even want to go? I’m usually up for an adventure, but I would never go camping for more than two days either. I like the outdoors, but I also like my memory foam mattress and soaker tub.
George nodded patiently. “I know, Bess, and I know how important that class is to you. I looked it up online, and you’re allowed to attend lectures via video conference, aren’t you?”
Bess wrinkled her nose. “I guess? I’ve always gone in person.”
“And you could be working on your paper on the road,” George went on. “The van has electricity, and I checked: All the campgrounds on the itinerary offer Wi-Fi. So you can sign in to your class on Monday, before we leave the campground. And then you can be working on your paper whenever you need—there’ll be a lot of downtime while we’re driving—and you can turn it in electronically while we’re at a campground.”
Bess sighed, then looked at me. “What do you think, Nance?” she asked. “Does this sound ridiculous to you?”
“Kind of,” I admitted. “But… I’m not saying no yet.” I turned to the prizewinner. “How important is this to you, George?”
George’s eyes widened as she leaned toward us. “Soooooooo important, you guys,” she said earnestly. “I know this might seem like a new interest to you, but it’s something I’m really excited about. If I like these seven days, maybe I would start thinking about saving up for a van or RV. Matt and Sammy have this amazing life!”
“Actually, I remember you mentioning it a few weeks ago,” I admitted. “I just—didn’t realize how serious you were, I guess?”
“How expensive are these vans?” Bess asked. “Like, how valuable is this prize?”
“They’re really expensive,” George replied. “Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It costs a lot to outfit a van to make it livable year-round. You can save a little money doing it yourself, but… it’s a little house, basically.”
“So this might be your only shot,” Bess said. “At trying van life, I mean.”
George nodded. “I’m too young to rent an RV. So yeah. This is kind of a huge opportunity.”
Bess looked at me. I stared back at her. An understanding seemed to pass between us. I could feel clearly that neither one of us was terribly excited about this. I love traveling, but given a week to explore a new place, I would be flying and staying in a nice hotel with a pool, thank you very much. And Bess likes the occasional camping trip, but she likes her creature comforts, too. But: We both love George to bits. And George is always there for us and never asks for much. If it was her dream come true to drive a camper van from Chicago to Los Angeles, and she needed Bess and me to do it…
“Okay,” I said, at the same time Bess turned to George and announced, “We’re in.”
George pushed her laptop away and leaped up to hug us.
“You guys!” she cried, reaching out to pull us both close. “I knew I could count on you! And I promise we’ll have the best time. I’ve been doing a lot of research! I’m going to make this a super-smooth trip for all of us!”
Bess raised an eyebrow at me over George’s back, but I pretended not to see. I was feeling pretty trepidatious about this “van life” too. No matter how much three people liked or loved one another, was it possible to live in a tiny van for seven days and have it all go “super smooth”?
But I was going to give this my best shot—for George. “Road trip!” I yelled excitedly.
“Road trip!” George shouted back, hugging us harder.
“Road trip!” Bess called, shaking her head. “I’ll start making a playlist, guys.”
Descriere
Nancy and friends embark on an ill-fated crosscountry road trip in the twenty-seventh Nancy Drew Diaries.