Amwell, to fetch a poison to kill her husband, Mr. She's assisted by Gaynor, a woman who works at the British Museum.īack in 1791, a 12-year-old servant girl, Eliza Fanning visits Nella's shop. Curious about the vial, she begins to investigate its origins. She goes on a mudlarking (looking for old objects in the mud) tour of the Thames and discovers a light blue vial etched with a bear (the insignia of Nella's apothecary shop). She's in London for the vacation they were supposed to have gone on together. In present day, Caroline is a woman who has just discovered that her husband of ten years, James, was cheating on her. He had not only turned out to be married, but when Nella had told him she was pregnant, he'd secretly given Nella an herb to cause a miscarriage. Nella began dispensing poisons when she was betrayed by a lover, Frederick. In The Lost Apothecary, Nella runs a secret apothecary shop hidden behind a fake back wall in London where she sells poisons to women, spread by word of mouth, to be used against the men in their lives who have wronged them. She finds a clue (a vial) about the apothecary shop, tracks down its history, discovers Eliza's involvement, and ultimately decides to toss the vial back into the water to keep Eliza's secret. In present day, Caroline is a woman who has been betrayed by her husband. But a (possibly magic) tincture Eliza made ends up saving them both, and Nella realizes that dispensing these poisons is not the way to cure the pain of betrayal. When the authorities track her down, a young girl who had been helping her, Eliza, sacrifices herself to save Nella. The one paragraph version of this: In 1971 in London, Nella runs a secret apothecary shop, illegally dispensing poisons for women to kill men who have wronged them.

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