Take three friends. Add an old cookbook. Combine with cute boys and a pinch of magic…and see what kind of chaos ensues! When Kelly Quinn and her two BFFs discover a dusty old cookbook while cleaning out the attic, the girls decide to try a few of the mysterious and supposedly magical recipes that are inside. To their surprise, the Keep ’Em Quiet Cobbler actually silences Kelly’s pesky little brother and the Hexberry Tart puts a curse on mean girl Charlotte. Is it possible that the recipes really are magic? Who wrote them and where did they come from? And most importantly of all, when boys get involved, what kind of trouble are the girls stirring up for themselves? Cindy Callaghan is the author of the middle grade novels Lost in London , Lost in Paris , Lost in Rome , Lost in Ireland (formerly titled Lucky Me ), Lost in Hollywood , the award-winning Sydney Mackenzie Knocks ’Em Dead , Just Add Magic (which is now a breakout streaming original series), and its sequel Potion Problems . She lives in Wilmington, Delaware. Just Add Magic 1 The Secret in the Attic Question: What do you get when you mix two girls hungry for cash with a cleaning project? Answer: Kelly Quinn and Darbie O’Brien in a dark, dusty, spider-webby attic on their last day of summer vacation. Correction: I, Kelly Quinn, was cleaning. Darbie Rollerbladed in the clutter-free areas, careful not to bang her head on the rafters. THUD! I had missed Darbie this summer while she had been at her dad’s house at the beach and I had been at camp. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Fine.” Darbie sat among the piles of attic stuff, rubbing her head. “Where did all this junk-arooni come from?” she asked. “Some of it was my grandmother’s. And some belongs to the witch, Mrs. Silvers, from across the street. Her basement flooded years ago, and presto, we got her junk,” I said. “Are you gonna give it back to her?” “She says she doesn’t want any of it,” I said. Darbie lifted a heavy old book out of a tub full of old books, magazines, and newspapers. “Check out this book. It looks older than my grandpa Stan.” She blew off the dust, her skin shining with sweat, and I noticed her freckles were dark from her beach tan. (I never mention her freckles out loud. Last time I did, she Rollerbladed over my sandwich: smoked ham and Muenster cheese, with honey mustard on rye.) Books are “blah” to Darbie. I don’t love them myself, unless it’s my journal or one of my cookbooks. Oh, BTW, I’m Kelly Quinn, age twelve, seventh-grader, lover of all things cooking, mediocre soccer player, average student, and best friend to Darbie O’Brien and Hannah Hernandez. I wasn’t thrilled to spend my last day of summer vacation cleaning the attic. However, I needed the money, and any time I could spend hanging with one of my BFFs couldn’t be all that bad. “Look, Kell,” Darbie said excitedly, dusting off a book. “It’s dated 1953.” For a book to capture Darbie’s attention, I figured it must’ve been something pretty interesting. “Wow, that’s older than my mom.” I wiped the rest of the book off with the bottom of my T-shirt. “It’s a World Book Encyclopedia, Volume T .” “Encyclopedia? Yuck!” Darbie tossed the book like it was a hot tamale burning her fingers. I was curious, so I flipped through it. I looked for “tamale.” It only took a second for me to realize there was no tamale, tomato, turnovers, or anything else starting with the letter T . In fact, the book wasn’t filled with anything encyclopedia-ish. The original pages were pasted over with yellowed stationery. The papers were thick, a little crunchy, and stained in places. The words on the stationery were handwritten, a little sloppy, and a few were in Spanish. I knew what I was looking at right away. These were recipes. I sat on the trunk and looked at each heavy page. The names of the recipes were very interesting: Forget-Me-Not Cupcakes, Love Bug Juice, and Tell Me the Truth Tea. And there were notes written all around the edges of the stationery, in the margins of the encyclopedia. “Darbie,” I said. “This isn’t an encyclopedia at all. It’s a bunch of recipes hidden in an encyclopedia. Do you know what that makes this?” I asked. “A recipedia!” Darbie said, grabbing some chunky pearls and bejeweled sunglasses from a hatbox as she Rollerbladed by. “That sounds perfect for a Food Network junkie like you.” She was right. I love to cook. Ever since my encounter with the famous TV chef Felice Foudini herself, I haven’t been able to get enough of cooking. My mom and I cook together all the time, and my other BFF, Hannah, gave me the very first book in my cookbook collection, which consists of six books ranging across the meal, dessert, and snack spectrums. They’re stored on a kitchen shelf with different colored Post-it notes sticking out from all sides. “No, not a recipedia. Listen to this stuff: ‘Induces sleep,’ ‘Keeps ’em quiet,’ ‘Brings your true amor .’ Darbie, there’s only one thing