Perfume and Pain

Struggling author Astrid Dahl is living in a Los Angeles bungalow, struggling through the throes of her addiction to a cocktail of substances she has deemed the “Patricia Highsmith.” Her love life is in shambles and her career is on the brink of cancellation after a Barnes & Noble event gone wrong—but at least she has her online writing group, Sapphic Scribes, to fall back on. Soon, Astrid is lusting after her Gen-X, lesbian neighbor Penelope while also engaging in an obsessive affair with Ivy, an agent of chaos and PhD student in her writing group, all while balancing the prospect that a young starlet wants to adapt her latest novel. Anna Dorn’s latest is a fever dream that pays homage to the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s.

Buy Now: Perfume and Pain on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble