Much of the Toronto author's latest novel about a woman's self-discovery in the aftermath of loss is predictable and familiar, but its simple and subtle narrative sets it apart from similar stories.

Women searching out summer-reading material will want to sniff out Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (Henry Holt, 2008). In it, the New York Times’s perfume critic illuminates the invisible facets of the multibillion-dollar fragrance industry, and compares the conception and execution of two perfumes, Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès and Sex in the City star Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely by Coty.