Book excerpt: This book opens the audience’s eyes to the extraordinary scientific secrets hiding in everyday objects. Helping readers increase chemistry knowledge in a fun and entertaining way, the book is perfect as a supplementary textbook or gift to curious professionals and novices. • Appeals to a modern audience of science lovers by discussing multiple examples of chemistry in everyday life • Addresses compounds that affect everyone in one way or another: poisons, pharmaceuticals, foods, and illicit drugs; thereby evoking a powerful emotional response which increases interest in the topic at hand • Focuses on edgy types of stories that chemists generally tend to avoid so as not to paint chemistry in a bad light; however, these are the stories that people find interesting • Provides detailed and sophisticated stories that increase the reader’s fundamental scientific knowledge • Discusses complex topics in an engaging and accessible manner, providing the “how” and “why” that takes readers deeper into the stories