Over the next two years, twelve books written both under her own name and under several pseudonyms would be published. Nancy Drew was thriving, too, on that western ranch in Arizona, in the company of Harriet Otis Smith’s final innovation before her departure from the Syndicate—otherwise known as Bess and George, the matched pair of girl chums would soon become as much a part of Nancy Drew’s legend as her blue roadster. One a dark-haired tomboy, the other giggly and blond, cousins George Fayne and Bess Marvin appeared for the first time in The Secret at Shadow Ranch, published in early 1931. Mildred later acknowledged that of all the stories she had worked on, it was one of her favorites because of its setting, which she had a grand time researching at the Cleveland Public Library. She wrote many of the chapters in the tiny kitchen of the rental apartment where she and Asa were living in Cleveland, on a typewriter set up on an overturned orange crate. While Asa worked the night shift at the Associated Press, Mildred wrote and attempted to perform the duties of a housewife that were currently so in vogue, the latter out of a sense of obligation rather than any interest in or proficiency at the culinary arts.
