When Hinkley builds a prototype for a new high-efficiency car, he asks Nancy and her mechanic Bess to drive it in a government-sponsored race in which the winner receives a government development contract, but someone is determined to keep Nancy and Bess from winning.

Nancy Drew must protect an unstable super fuel-efficient engine, a creation that could possibly end the world's energy crisis, but along the train journey she and her friend George realize that their adversaries will destroy the train if they fail in stealing the engine.

Adopted by famous Pinkerton Agency Detective Hawking in 1895 New York, fourteen-year-old Carver Young hopes to find his birth father, but when he becomes involved in the pursuit of notorious killer Jack the Ripper, Carver discovers that finding the truth can be worse than ignorance.