Books with title Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion / The Hidden Staircase

The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion is the eighteenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series published by Grossett & Dunlap, and was first published in 1941. The original text was written by ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson, based upon a plot outline from Stratemeyer Syndicate co-owner Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. The book's title was changed to Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion when it was revised in 1971, because the story is completely different and not much of the investigation takes place at the title location. In the original, many plots and much investigation all tie back to the same house deep in the forest, while Nancy helps her father locate an heiress, expose an impostor, investigate a murder, and look into strange screams at the mansion; none of the action in the original story took place in River Heights. The original dust jacket was painted by Russell H. Tandy, and depicts Nancy, Bess, and George digging for buried money on the grounds of the title location. Tandy also illustrated a frontispiece; this volume is the first in the series to have only one illustration on plain paper; previously, glossy, highly detailed art was used. The cover, but not the interior illustration, was updated to the same scene, set in the 1960s, with Nancy, Bess and George, by Rudy Nappi. Nappi also illustrated the new volume's location with Nancy in the foreground stalked by a panther. An uncredited artist provided five internal line drawings and a frontispiece for the revised text.

The time. . .the 1940s. The place. . .war-torn England. The mystery. . .has only just begun! Recorded in this volume are all the facts involving several strange and unexplainable happenings at a crumbling country manor known as Whispering Willow. Eleven-year-old sleuths Jack and Jenny Dunnit and Eliza McClue receive an urgent letter requesting their presence at the old estate, but is there really a mystery to be solved at Whispering Willow, and if so. . . .exactly what is it? Also featuring three “Solve-It-Yourself” Mini-Mysteries- where you can be your own detective and catch the culprit yourself! CASE #4 in the Mystery Manor series. Visit www.fantasticalchildren.com for more titles.