The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew, Book 1)

The first Nancy Drew mystery, published in 1930 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, introduces the teenage sleuth, who lives in River Heights with her father, the lawyer Carson Drew. When the wealthy, eccentric Josiah Crowley dies, the only will anyone can find leaves his estate to the grasping Topham family, although several needy relatives had been told they would be remembered. Nancy is drawn in after she rescues a little girl who is being raised by two elderly great-aunts, both among those relatives, and she sets out to find the missing will. Mildred Wirt Benson is credited as the writer, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams later rewrote the story. By 2001 it had sold about 2.7 million hardcover copies.

Pittsburgh Technology Council chief executive Audrey Russo named all the Nancy Drew books among the novels on her reading list.