The Perfumist of Paris

In Alka Joshi’s latest novel, a sweeping story of love, family and identity, it's Paris 1974 and Radha, Lakshmi's younger sister, has parlayed her talent for scent into a rising career in the hyper-competitive perfume industry, when the secret son she gave up for adoption arrives on her doorstep unannounced to complicate her life. Paris, 1974. Radha, the younger sister who arrived in Jaipur in The Henna Artist and posed such a threat to the life Lakshmi made for herself catering to the wealthy palace women, is now 32, married and living in Paris.

After the pain of giving up her beloved Niki, the infant boy born out of wedlock when she was just 14, Radha has gone on to attend a private boarding school in Shimla studying math and chemistry. There, shortly before her graduation, she meets and falls in love with a young French architect named Pierre, who is doing research. Against her older sister Lakshmi's advice, Radha follows Pierre back to Paris where they marry and now have two daughters.

As a favor, Radha agrees to help out a friend's elderly grandfather in his perfumery. It is in this small Paris shop that her natural gift for scent is noticed and leads her to a position in the high-stakes perfume industry, where her talent for formulating just the right essence puts her on a path to sucess. Despite Pierre's frustration over her time spent at work, and the professional jealousies working against her as the rare woman in her field, Radha thrives.

But she has always turned back any outreach from Niki's adoptive mother Kanta--it's the only way she can keep her painful secret at bay. Her one concession--and only she knows--is the small vial she wears that contains the scent of rain--she has created this scent for her alone to remind her of Niki.

Then when she is on her first business trip back to India to research scents for a new commission, a young handsome 17-year-old arrives at her apartment in Paris and is looking for her. Pierre assumes the young Indian man is her cousin and invites him to stay.

When Radha returns home, she is in shock and doesn't know what to do. This long lost son had discovered letters his "mother" Kanta had sent to Radha but were returned unopened. Their existence piqued his interest--who was this mysterious woman in Paris? And what was her relationship to him?

Suddenly Radha's life is upended--her marriage, her family, her career. Only she can decide whether or not to let this young man back into her life, with all the complications that path will surely bring.

The Perfumist of Paris is the last novel in The Jaipur Trilogy, a saga of love, family and identity that begins with the New York Times bestselling novel The Henna Artist and continues with The Secret Keeper of Jaipur.