New and upcoming perfume books for 2015: Perfume: A Century of Scents by Lizzie Ostrom, Vintage Perfumes by Jan Moran, The Last Rose of Summer by Kate Lord Brown, Un monde d'odeurs by Mathilde Laurent and Hidden Scents: The Language of Smell in the Age of Approximation by Allen Barkkume.

Perfume: A Century of Scents

The first book from Lizzie Ostrom, aka Odette Toilette.

The book tells the incredible stories of 100 perfumes in all their fragrant glory – with ten lovingly chosen scents for each decade of the twentieth century.

Signature scents and now lost masterpieces; the visionaries who conceived them; the wild and wonderful campaigns that launched them; the women and men who wore them – every perfume has a tale to tell. Join me on an olfactory adventure as I explore the trends and crazes that have shaped the way we’ve spritzed.

To be published in the UK in October, and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon UK. Current price shown for the hardback is £14.88 (there is also a Kindle edition).

Vintage Perfumes

A book by Jan Moran, intended as a companion piece to her novel Scent of Triumph.

Vintage perfumes are classic fragrances that have stood the test of time. A collection of popular beloved perfumes from 1850 to 1980, Vintage Perfumes is an insightful collection of feminine, masculine, and unisex favorites from bygone years.

Fragrances from Chanel, Dior, Caron, Creed, Jean Patou, and many others are included. Discover the magic and mystery of perfumes that have been cherished for decades — and some as long as a century or more. What makes these perfumes unique? Learn about the perfumers and designers, as well as the notes, fragrance family, and historical famous patrons associated with the finest perfumes in the world.

The Kindle edition is currently $5.99 at Amazon.

The Last Rose of Summer

A short story prequel to Kate Lord Brown's The Perfume Garden.

With The Last Rose of Summer, Kate Lord Brown immerses readers in the rich, sensual world of modern Valencia, Spain, where an abandoned villa holds the key to a woman's past, and her daughter's future.

It's midsummer's night, and the Festival of San Juan illuminates the city streets; the beautiful Valencian coast is ablaze with the light of bonfires crackling on the beaches and fireworks in the sky. Liberty has invited John--the man she refused to marry but never stopped loving--to meet her there. She hopes that together they will discover the truth about the Villa del Valle--but she has a secret. Can John learn to live, and can Liberty learn to let go, before it is too late?

The Kindle edition is currently 99¢ at Amazon.

Un monde d'odeurs

Perfumer Mathilde Laurent writes about her career as a perfumer in this 80-page essay, in French.

Mathilde Laurent nous parle avec talent, précision et humour de son métier de parfumeur. Loin des images que l'on peut en avoir, elle nous fait découvrir un métier de rigueur, de calculs et de formules, d'essais et d'expérimentations innombrables, un métier secret et pas si solitaire. Un métier responsable, tant les substances manipulées sont précieuses ou même parfois dangereuses, et rare aussi puisque seules trois grandes maisons emploient encore un parfumeur. On se prend à rêver que ce savoir-faire ne s'éteigne pas faute d'artisans. Et si nous n'étions plus capables demain de créer et même de conserver les plus grands parfums ?

(Google translation: Mathilde Laurent speaks with talent, precision and humor of his perfumer. Far from the images that one can have, it makes us discover a rigorous profession, calculations and formulas, testing and countless experiments, a secret and not so lonely profession. A business manager, both are valuable substances handled or even sometimes dangerous, and rare also because only three houses still use a perfumer. One begins to dream that this knowledge does not die out for lack of craftsmen. And if we were not able tomorrow to create and maintain even the largest perfumes?)

The paperback (in French) is €12.50 at Amazon.

Hidden Scents: The Language of Smell in the Age of Approximation

A new non-fiction work by first time author Allen Barkkume.

Hidden Scents will vaporize you into an aromatic molecule, tickling the brain-fingers in your nose.

A cacophony of receptor neurons activating and inhibiting, you become a recognized pattern and burst towards the limbic superhighway of the primitive organism.

You are an emotion, a virtual body-state stored in memory, coming to life once again in the act of perception.

In a breath, you are exhaled, washed away into the lexicographical maelstrom of the Language of Smell.

Hidden Scents explores our consensual reality, and reveals its inherent ambiguity. On the surface, however, it is a book about the olfactive system, not only of the human but of human culture. In the concluding series of essays, olfaction is used as a paradigm for navigating issues on the threshold of public discourse: space and dimensionality, artificial intelligence, quantum theory, and the future of the internet.

The book is available at Lulu in e-book (PDF, $4.99) or Paperback ($9.97).