Reading While Traveling | Workamping in Florida

Reading while traveling in your recreational vehicle and camping in some great campground is probably one of the top 5 past times when RVing. We just like to relax while we are camping and reading does that for us. We have found that most of our RVing pals do as well. So, for this blog post we decided to download some eBooks to our Kindle and see what is available that uses camping, RVing, and/or campgrounds as part of their story. To get started I read through some of the Full-Time RVing Facebook group pages to see if anyone has made any suggestions lately. From there I was able to go on Amazon and check out the titles recommended. A nice feature that Amazon has is that they give you recommendations based on your current searches as well as what others have bought when they purchased the books that you are looking at. My mom and I like murder mysteries. So most of our selections and recommendations will be in that area. We went ahead and added a new section to our Amazon Affiliate Page labeled RVing/Camping Fiction to get you started. We all have our favorite authors that we read but we thought it would be fun to gather a listing of those stories that we could relate to as RVers.

Two writers we are currently reading are Karen Musser Nortman and Minnie Crockwell. Karen writes the Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mystery Series and Minnie writes the Will Travel For Trouble Mysteries. I went ahead and purchased the first 5 of the Frannie Shoemaker books and the first 6 of the Minnie Crockwell to get a good idea about the series and to be able to write an article or two about them.

In a nutshell, Frannie Shoemaker and her husband Larry enjoy camping in their travel trailer on weekends with a few of their friends. Mostly, they like to camp in and around Iowa and prefer the natural/rustic settings of the State and National Parks campgrounds. Lately, they seem to be getting involved in murder investigations. Frannie is a retired school teacher (history/social studies) and her husband, Larry, is a retired police chief of their small town. Generally, they like to travel with Larry’s brother, Mickey Ferraro who is also a retired school teacher (English) and his wife Jane Ann (Frannie’s best friend) is a retired Nurse. Their adventures are many, they like to stay active with hiking, biking and canoeing but mostly they like to sit around the campfire, cooking, playing games and just enjoying each others company. At least, until a murder intrudes and then Frannie, along with her reluctant husband, gathers the clues and fingers the murderer. Ms. Nortman, the author, has a nice little website at: http://www.karenmussernortman.com/ Just like her main character she is a retired school teacher who likes to go camping in their travel trailer with her husband and some friends in and around Iowa and the surrounding states.

The other mysteries series, “Will Travel for Trouble” is slightly different in that the author and the main character have the same name; they both travel around in a Class A RV and we assume they are about the same age. Hummmmm, more mysteriouser!!! She has an 18th century ghost as a travel companion and records her adventures in novellas instead of full length novels. Retired from her Federal job after 20 years she saved up her money without taking any trips or vacations in all that time. Finally, she busts out, retires in her 40s, buys a very nice 37 foot class A RV and starts traveling wherever the wind blows. She is starting out the the Pacific Northwest in the first 6 stories that I have read so far. Strangely, almost every place she stops she encounters a dead body. Being a curious person by nature she just has to snoop until she ferrets out “Who Did It”. All the while getting help from her ghostly companion.

Here is her website: http://www.minniecrockwell.com/

You can get the first Frannie Shoemaker Book by Clicking on the box below