The Perfume Thief

A LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER A Gentleman in Moscow meets "Moulin Rouge" in this stylish, sexy page-turner set in Paris on the eve of World War II, where Clementine, a queer American ex-pat and notorious thief, is drawn out of retirement and into one last scam when the Nazis invade. "[A] superb novel . . . This is historical fiction at its finest, vivid and beautifully rendered."—EMILY ST JOHN MANDEL author of The Glass HotelClementine is a seventy-two year-old reformed con artist with a penchant for impeccably tailored suits. Her life of crime has led her from the uber-wealthy perfume junkies of belle epoque Manhattan, to the scented butterflies of Costa Rica, to the spice markets of Marrakech, and finally the bordellos of Paris, where she settles down in 1930 and opens a shop bottling her favorite extracts for the ladies of the cabarets....