The Perfume Garden

An international bestseller: A brokenhearted young woman seeking a fresh start uncovers family secrets relating to events during the Spanish Civil War.

High in the hills of Valencia, a forgotten house guards its secrets. Untouched since Franco's forces tore through Spain in 1936, the whitewashed walls have crumbled, and the garden, laden with orange blossom, grows wild. Emma Temple is the first to unlock its doors in seventy years. London's leading perfumier, Emma has just inherited this house after her free-spirited mother, Liberty—who taught her the art of fragrance making—passed away. Having just broken up with her long-time lover and business partner, Joe, whose baby she happens to be carrying, Emma leaves her job to make Valencia her home, where she will give birth in the house her mother mysteriously purchased just before her death.

The villa is a perfect retreat: redolent with the exotic scents of orange blossom and neroli, dappled with light and with the rich colors of a forgotten time. Emma makes it her mission to restore the place to its former glory. But for her aging grandmother, Freya, a British nurse who stayed in Valencia during Spain's devastating civil war, Emma's new home evokes memories of a terrible secret, a part of her family's past that until now has managed to stay hidden.

With two beautifully interwoven narratives and a lush, atmospheric setting, Kate Lord Brown's The Perfume Garden is a dramatic, emotional debut that readers won't soon forget.

“Sweepingly romantic . . . heartbreaking at times; a vivid, gripping read.” —Katherine Webb, International Bestselling Author of The Legacy