The Motor Girls at Camp Surprise; Or, The Cave in the Mountains

In 1910, three girls in an automobile is already half the adventure. Cora Kimball, behind the wheel of her own car, and the Robinson twins Bess and Belle are headed for a summer at Camp Surprise when something goes hilariously wrong: the car vanishes, allegedly spirited away by a couple of mysterious young men. What follows is a cheerful scramble of investigation, miscommunication, and the kind of small-town drama that unfolds when everyone has too much time and not enough facts. The girls trade quips about fat tires and straying hair, bicker with Cora's brother Jack and his friend Walter, and find themselves drawn into a genuine puzzle hiding somewhere in the mountains near their campsite. A cave figures into the mystery. So do secrets. So does a whole lot of early automobile comedy. Written in the breezy, dialog-heavy style popular a century ago, this is the kind of book where a near-miss with a chicken becomes a running joke and a missing car becomes the gateway to something stranger. It endures not as great literature but as pure period pleasure: a snapshot of American girls getting out into the world on their own terms, with engines humming and trouble brewing.