An intimate exploration of inspiration and creativity, from the "parfumeur exclusif" of the house of Hermès. A scent has incantatory powers, capable of transporting you to your past, of kindling fantasies, of creating a vivid mise en scène—literally out of thin air. In the hands of the truly great, perfume creation is a kind of alchemy. Where does inspiration for this visceral art come from? How does one capture the essence of emotions, of desire? Jean-Claude Ellena has a sublime gift. As "parfumeur exclusif" (or "the nose") for Hermès, he elevates fragrance to an art form. A "writer of perfume," his concoctions are as finely composed and evocative as a haiku. He is also a conjurer of sorts: "I create an illusion that is actually stronger than reality . . . you enter the scent and follow the path." The Diary of a Nose is a collection of Ellena’s meditations on the world of scents, and what stirs his creation of some of the world’s most desired fragrances. Inspiration can come from anywhere—a market stall, a landscape, or even the movement of calligraphy. Though each smell has its own distinct character, a gifted perfumer creates olfactory experiences that are intensely personal and unique, that blossom on the body and leave a trace of us lingering after we have left a room. Seductive, delicate, and elegant as any of Ellena’s creations, The Diary of a Nose seeks to capture the most elusive facets of this rarefied and mysterious art.

Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.

A bizarre mix of broad comedy, fantasy, and social commentary, the title story offers an unforgettable depiction of a lunatic civil servant. Includes "Nevski Prospect" and "The Portrait."

The classic collection of personal prayers updated in modern, accessible language.

Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life. "Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit." —The New York Times Book Review When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. "I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man," and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks's life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own. For ten years, Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers’ doors, dug through nursing home records, and doggedly searched for Roy’s own diaries, trying to uncover what Roy was like as a person—what he felt; what he thought; and how he grappled with his sense of otherness. With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability, Parks writes about finding oneself through someone else’s story, and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us.

Born into the world of perfume (his grandfather was the founder of Parfums Christian Dior), Frédéric Malle's deep knowledge of scents and his radical vision of perfumes led him, in 2000, to establish Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, a house for perfumers where fragrances are conceived as haute couture creations. At a time when the self-service sale of perfumes was on the rise, Malle chose to open a boutique that would provide a luxurious setting for the perfumes he "publishes" with the world's greatest perfumers. Malle's determination has been to champion the art of perfumery itself, granting perfumers total and complete freedom to create, furnishing them with exceptional raw materials and releasing all boundaries and constraints, restoring the art of perfume making to its former glory. This October, to mark the twentieth anniversary of Frédéric Malle's quest for beauty and creative freedom, Rizzoli will publish Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: The First Twenty Years. A necessary addition to the libraries of industry masters, this volume is an exploration of the inspirations and vision of one of the great protagonists of contemporary perfume. 2020 marks a historic date for the house: twenty years of audacity and creativity. Twenty years of shifting paradigms in the exacting world of perfumery. In Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: The First Twenty Years, Malle offers readers an intimate glimpse into his brand's saga and shares the stories behind four of his most successful scents in graphic-novel form. Journalist Marion Vignal delves into Malle's lifelong devotion to perfume, personal history, and myriad inspirations to uncover the evolution of his precise olfactory aesthetics, while imagery of perfume bottles, sketches, advertising campaigns, and photos of boutiques explores his comprehensive vision. With art direction by Patrick Li, the book features an eclectic palette of imagery from the personal archives of the founder, as well as illustrations, unique sketches and authentic stories about Malle's collaboration with Perfumers. Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: The First Twenty Years is an invitation to a sensorial journey that will delight perfume lovers everywhere. This volume invites faithful connoisseurs of haute perfumery and lovers of fine craftsmanship alike to join in celebrating an authentic, audacious, exacting, and rich brand.

Cleopatra's Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman's celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women's work"—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence. Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra's Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.