I was the woman who believed in fairy tales; he was the monster of them. The Devil of Ravencliff Manor. The Phantom. Radcliff. Escorted by a prince, my obsession led me to the villain's lair, with no hope for rescue. Trapped inside his greenhouse, our once upon a time began with a flower. More accurately, with a scent that captivated me. I signed my soul over to the man who represented my sinister nightmares. The one known to belong to the cruel shadows, who offered me my perfumer's dream. He demanded the impossible: the missing piece of his kingdom of sins. I stalked the impossible: his humanity. This is our dark tale. When beauty met ugliness. When light met darkness. When heaven met hell. A tale of obsession.

For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work. Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world’s most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world’s perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems. Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin’s quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.

A sudden love affair with fragrance leads to sensual awakening, self-transformation, and an unexpected homecoming At thirty-six—earnest, bookish, terminally shopping averse—Alyssa Harad thinks she knows herself. Then one day she stumbles on a perfume review blog and, surprised by her seduction by such a girly extravagance, she reads in secret. But one trip to the mall and several dozen perfume samples later, she is happily obsessed with the seductive underworld of scent and the brilliant, quirky people she meets there. If only she could put off planning her wedding a little longer. . . . Thus begins a life-changing journey that takes Harad from a private perfume laboratory in Austin, Texas, to the glamorous fragrance showrooms of New York City and a homecoming in Boise, Idaho, with the women who watched her grow up. With warmth and humor, Harad traces the way her unexpected passion helps her open new frontiers and reclaim traditions she had rejected. Full of lush description, this intimate memoir celebrates the many ways there are to come to our senses.

Publisher description

'An authoritative guide from two experts who really know their way around scent' – FUNMI FETTO The Perfume Companion is a beautifully illustrated compendium of almost 500 recommended scents, designed to help you pick out your next favourite fragrance. Perfumes have the power to evoke treasured memories, make us feel fabulous and help us express our best self. But with so many out there, how do you choose something new? When the scents in the perfume shop are merging into one aromatic haze, how do you remain focused? And if your favourite scent goes out of stock, how do you replace it? The Perfume Companion is here to help. Sarah McCartney and Samantha Scriven deliver a host of scents for you to try – including bargain finds and luxury treasures, iconic stalwarts and indie newcomers, the lightest florals and the deepest leathers. With insider information about how perfumes are really made, discover hundreds of new fragrances and find the scents to share your own memories with. This is the perfect companion for your scented adventures.

Bequeathed an original fragrance designed for her by her perfumer grandmother, eighteen-year-old Evangeline becomes an object of intense desire to those around her and wonders if a lonely artist who does not register her scent is the only person who loves her for herself.

Join Lizzie Ostrom on an olfactory adventure as she explores the trends and crazes that have shaped the way we’ve spritzed. One hundred perfumes and scents in all their fragrant glory reveal a fascinating social history of the past century. From the belle epoque through the swinging sixties, to the naughty nineties and beyond, Ostrom brings intelligence and wit to this most ravishing of subjects.There was the patriotic impact of English Lavender during World War I and perfumes that captured the Egyptomania of the 1920s. Estee Lauder created "Youth Dew" and with it, distilled the essence of 1950's suburbia. Patchouli oil—the "anti-perfume" of the 1960s—was sure to keep money out of the hands of corporations and "the man." And who could forget the fervor created by the grunge androgyny of CK One? Scent is truly the passport to memory, making Perfume both a lush treat and an insightful examination of the twentieth century through the most mysterious of the five sense.

The Perfect Scent is the thrilling inside story of the global perfume industry, told through two creators working on two very different scents.

In 2012 writer John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time, he embarked on a rereading of George Orwell and—still coping with his recent disability—noticed something peculiar: Orwell was positively obsessed with smell. In this original, irreverent biography, Sutherland offers a fresh account of Orwell’s life and works, one that sniffs out a unique, scented trail that wends from Burmese Days through Nineteen Eighty-Four and on to The Road to Wigan Pier. Sutherland airs out the odors, fetors, stenches, and reeks trapped in the pages of Orwell’s books. From Winston Smith’s apartment in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats,” to the tantalizing aromas of concubine Ma Hla May’s hair in Burmese Days, with its “mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coconut oil, and jasmine,” Sutherland explores the scent narratives that abound in Orwell’s literary world. Along the way, he elucidates questions that have remained unanswered in previous biographies, addressing gaps that have kept the writer elusively from us. In doing so, Sutherland offers an entertaining but enriching look at one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and, moreover, an entirely new and sensuous way to approach literature: nose first.

2012 Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Non-Fiction "FANTASTIC. If I did not know most of the main players I would have thought the author had a vivid and twisted imagination."--Paul Martin Brown, author of Wild Orchids of Florida "A fascinating true story of obsession, greed, and lust for the unobtainable. Reminds me a great deal of The Maltese Falcon. This rare flower is definitely the stuff that dreams are made of."--Ace Atkins, author of Devil's Garden and Infamous "Pittman has captured the extreme competition, unique characters, and general insanity that often typify the orchid world. The Scent of Scandal exemplifies how passion and profit can overrule common sense and the law."--Scott Steward, former associate editor, North American Native Orchid Journal After its Peruvian discovery in 2002, Phragmipedium kovachii became the rarest and most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to $10,000 on the black market. Then one showed up at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where every year more than 100,000 people visit. They come for the lush landscape on Sarasota Bay and for Selby's vast orchid collection, one of the most magnificent in the world. The collision between Selby's scientists and the smugglers of Phrag. Kovachii, a rare ladyslipper orchid hailed as the most significant and beautiful new species discovered in a century, led to search warrants, a grand jury investigation, and criminal charges. It made headlines around the country, cost the gardens hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and led to tremendous internal turmoil. Investigative journalist Craig Pittman unravels this tangled web to shine a spotlight on flaws in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife--which may protect individual plants and animals in shipping but do little to halt the destruction of whole colonies in the wild. The Scent of Scandal unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief or the film Adaptation. Pittman shows how some people can become so obsessed--with beauty, with profit, with fame--that they will ignore everything, even the law.