“THE SECRET INGREDIENT,” by Stewart Lewis, Delacorte Press, June 11, 2013, Hardcover, $17.99 (young adult)

Olivia is your average 16-year-old. School. Work. Friends. Family. But there’s more to her than that. Olivia loves to cook. She even creates a special dish once a week at dad Bell’s restaurant. She has a special gift with food — soothing Bell, Enrique, her other dad, brother Jeremy, and anyone else who needs it, with her inspired cooking.

Everything isn’t perfect, but Olivia and her family are happy. Except things are a little worse than Olivia first thought — Bell’s restaurant is in trouble, and the mortgage is way overdue. There’s only one thing Olivia can do, and that’s get a real, paying job.

It’s summer, and Olivia has her days full with work, cooking, watching out for her brother and discovering who she really is. As the days pass, Olivia realizes how much she misses having a mother in her life. She loves her dads, but there are just some things she needs a mom for.

Without her dads’ knowledge, Olivia sets out to find the woman who gave her life, tracking down her name and address and setting out on an adventure even she couldn’t imagine.

There’s a lot more to “The Secret Ingredient” than the synopsis above — an arrest, a romance, a movie executive — but who really wants to know everything that’s in a book before reading it?

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© 2013, Cracking the Cover. All rights reserved.

Kristen Kittscher (Photo by Konrad Tho Fiedler)

Like so many authors before her, Kristen Kittscher had a lifelong love of telling stories, but lacked the courage to take writing seriously until the right project came along.

For Kristen, that project developed from her experience teaching “very clever, funny” seventh-grade English students at an all-girls school. They became her muse for “Wig in the Window,” (June 18, HarperCollins Children’s) a fast-paced mystery/adventure featuring two girls whose game of spying on neighbors turns into something unexpected.

“I’d long wanted to write a novel, but it wasn’t until I thought of creating a story that would entertain kids like them that I finally threw myself into the project,” Kristen told Cracking the Cover. “It helped that one of my students had loaned me Kirsten Miller’s ‘Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City.’ I loved how Miller didn’t shy away from high stakes or talk down to her young readers — it gave me a sense of the possibilities when writing for kids!”

“The Wig in the Window” was born out of old snippets of free-writing experiences that Kristen stumbled upon. The snippets, which the author admits were heavily autobiographical, focus on an adult main character reminiscing about her sixth-grade exploits as a neighborhood spy.

“It was fun material,” Kristen said. “And I wondered what it might sound like from a kid’s point of view. I scrawled a note then: ‘Nancy Drew meets Rear Window?’ and further down on the page, another, cozy mystery for kids.’”

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© 2013, Cracking the Cover. All rights reserved.

“THE RULES,” by Stacey Kade, Disney-Hyperion, April 23, 2013, Hardcover, $17.99 (young adult)

Ariane Tucker follows the rules. All the rules. That may make her seem like a goody two shoes, but it’s more than that. If she doesn’t follow them, her life could be over in the snap of your fingers.

Ariane’s first memories are of the genetics lab were she was created. It’s the only thing she knew until her adoptive father helped her escape. Now she’s hiding in plain sight — in the same town where the lab is located.

The problem — Ariane is not fully human. She’s the result of lots of tests and research, constructed of part human and part extraterrestrial DNA. The only way to stay safe is to follow the rules and blend in with full-blooded humans. And that’s what she does. Ariane becomes a face in a crowd, innocuous. Not too smart, not too dumb, just average.

Hiding in plain sight works for years, but then Ariane slips up. When the popular kids pull a cruel joke on Ariane’s only friend, she can’t walk away, and that gets her noticed. Zane Bradshaw, is not only the police chief’s son, he’s also very observant. He sees Ariane’s unique qualities and wants to know more. Soon things are unraveling and Ariane becomes the center of attention, putting her whole life at risk.

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© 2013, Cracking the Cover. All rights reserved.

“THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT,” by Ian Baucom and Justin Gerard, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, March 19, 2013, Hardcover, $17.99 (ages 9 and up)

Jared, Shireen and Miranda live in Venice with their parents. You’d think that living in Italy would never get old, but the children have grown restless with their surroundings. But everything changes when an old Venetian shopkeeper secretly gives them each a gift — rings for the girls and an old dice for Jared.

At first, the gifts seem like tourist items from a nice old man. The siblings don’t know what power each item actually holds, but they’re about to find out.

A stone lion roars. …
A sleek black cat speaks. …
A faun leaps from the canvas of a painting. …
And the adventure begins. …

The siblings aren’t the only ones destined for adventure, though. Travel back to another time and another trio — Rashid, Maria and Francesca. The three children have witnessed magic under terrible circumstances. All they want to do is put things right and return home, but their fate is linked to that of three siblings far into the future.

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© 2013, Cracking the Cover. All rights reserved.

“WALKING THROUGH A WORLD OF AROMAS,” by Ariel Andres Almada and Sonja Wimmer, Cuento de Luz SL, April 1, 2013, hardcover, $16.95 (ages 5-7)

“When Annie was born, everything was dark …”

Annie is different than most people. And she knows that. As she was growing up, she’d hear her friends talk about colors and shapes, but it was all very confusing. One day, Annie’s mother seeks to clear up the confusion by handing her daughter an ice cube. “Blue feels like this,” she says. “And red feels like this,” she explains, holding Annie’s hands toward the fireplace.

It was in winter when Annie learned to walk among aromas — old furniture smelled like wax, fresh cookies smell like the kitchen and her cat, Paris, smells of cinnamon.

Annie’s favorite thing to do is spend time cooking with her grandmother, and when Annie cooks, the aromas are almost magical — they transport people to forgotten memories and places. With her gift Annie can help anyone, anyone except a young man who comes to her dragging his feet …

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© 2013, Cracking the Cover. All rights reserved.