Octavia Spencer, academy award winning actress, is set to pen two middle grade mystery novels for Simon & Schuster.

Simon & Schuster announced today that the first book, “Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective: The Case of the Time-Capsule Bandit,” will come out in the fall of 2014. Spencer said in a statement that she had been inspired by such mystery series as Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown and hoped to give kids the same “sense of magic.”

Octavia Spencer is probably best known for her role in The Help which earned her the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Spencer grew up in Montgomery, AL and had her first experience on a movie set for A Long Walk Home when she was 16. Spencer studied drama in college and earned her first role as a nurse in A Time to Kill based on the John Grisham novel.

Since that first role, Octavia Spencer has been in over 20 films including Dinner for Schmucks, Flypaper, and Smash.