Books where Poison Plays a Killer Role

Submitted: 25th February 2026

Books where Poison Plays a Killer Role

Poison is a very interesting method of killing someone. There’s a sentence! Agatha Christie used to work as a pharmacist and so got the idea of just what poison can do to people. She then included it in many of her novels. But the way that other authors have used poison as a tool really is worth looking into…for there have been some very inventive ways of dispensing it throughout the fictional world, and indeed the real one.

Are you ready? Make yourself a drink (don’t let someone else do it) and see if you fancy digesting any one of these:

A Slow and Secret Poison Carmella Lowkis

England – A Slow and Secret Poison

When Vee Morgan accepts the job of gardener at a crumbling stately home, she’s hoping for a fresh start where nobody knows her troubled history. But Harfold Manor is shadowed by grief and the memories of long-faded glory, its rooms haunted by the only surviving member of the family.

London – The Lost Apothecary

Sarah Penner invites you to 1700s London and tells a story about a mysterious apothecary who sells some secret potions….

Alnwick, England – The Poison Garden

And finally, if you want a novel where there is a LOT of poison….enter L J Ross who has crafted a crime novel around a very real poison garden in North East England that contains some of the most dangerous poisonous plants known to man. The garden is so deadly, you can only enter via timed guided tours….

Italy – A Poisoner’s Tale

Now this novel won the Historical Writers Debut Awards in 2025 ( full disclosure I am one of the judges) but even before we knew what books were coming our way, I had been championing this one. It’s the story of a woman in Italy who started selling secret potions to women who needed them. Women who were being abused or controlled in some way by their husbands and/or menfolk. And it’s based on a very real historical crime!!!

And a cosy one to end with: