With crackling suspense, unforgettable characters and searing insight, The Lost Apothecary is a subversive and intoxicating debut novel of secrets, vengeance and the remarkable ways women can save each other despite the barrier of time.ĭon’t miss THE LONDON SÉANCE SOCIETY! Sarah’s next spellbinding book about truth, illusion and the grave risks women will take to avenge the ones they love. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate-and not everyone will survive. Meanwhile in present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, running from her own demons. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. “A bold, edgy, accomplished debut!” -Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice NetworkĪ forgotten history. March 2021 Indie Next Pick and #1 LibraryReads Pick (Mar.Named Most Anticipated of 2021 by Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Hello! magazine,, Bustle, Popsugar, Betches, Sweet July, and GoodReads! Agent: Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. This has a few things going for it, but in the end it fails to cast a spell. And I mean that in all its strangeness, all its depth, all its death, and definitely all its sense of women helping women and women making sure that other women are, if not.

Penner’s story starts strong but peters out as the engaging premise gets muddled in convenient plot turns, though the author does a good job of making two disparate stories into eventual foils for one another. Escape Rating A-: If you crossed The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane with In the Garden of Spite you might get something in the neighborhood of The Lost Apothecary. Back in the present, Caroline contends with James showing up and getting accidentally poisoned after trying to win her back. Penner switches from Caroline’s sleuthing to the story of the apothecary, Nella Clavinger, who gave poison to women to use on men who wronged them in various ways. Her research on the bear etched on the bottle turns up newspaper articles about the suicide of a woman known as the London “Apothecary Killer” in 1791, and leads her to the site of the woman’s shop. There, she finds a glass vial in the Thames. After Caroline Parcewell learns her husband, James, is having an affair, she flies alone from Ohio to London on what was meant to be their anniversary trip. In Penner’s faltering debut, a contemporary American woman uncovers a clue to a series of unsolved murders in 18th-century London. VERDICT Readers who enjoy parallel historical/contemporary narratives about womens lives, such as Claire McMillans The Necklace or Liz Trenows The Forgotten.

The lost apothecary book review