She’s the only master perfumer at the House of Yves who insists on visiting her assistants in the fragrance lab to see what they’ve blended the other two master perfumers ask their assistants to bring samples to their offices.

Delphine will be here precisely at two o’clock. I look at the wall clock on the far side of the fragrance lab. In the sample I blended eight hours ago, the pungent smell of decaying wood lingers. The client has requested a fragrance that’s earthy but cool and light, like the middle, leafy layer of a forest-not its damp undergrowth. I’ve blended the formula three times, but I know something’s not right. My sister started calling me choti behen later, after everything in Jaipur turned topsy-turvy, forcing us to make a new home in Shimla. It was Malik who addressed me as little sister when I first met him in Jaipur eighteen years ago, and he wasn’t even related to Jiji and me by blood. I’d always called her Jiji-big sister-but she hadn’t always called me choti behen. It’s lovely to hear Lakshmi’s gentle Hindi here in my Paris apartment four thousand miles away. I hear the smile in her voice, and I respond with my own. I don’t want to wake Pierre and the girls. Not to remind me of the day he came into this world but to let me know I’m not alone in my remembrance. I pick up on the first ring I know it’s going to be her. Five Indian jasmine-scented stars!” -Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls, Lost Roses, and Sunflower Sisters CHAPTER 1 “I loved every fragrant page of Alka Joshi’s The Perfumist of Paris, as I cheered Radha along her fascinating journey from fragrance house lab assistant to fully realized woman and mother. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion-the treasure trove of scents. Radha is now living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters.

The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi