Poison & peril

Nightshade by ES Thomson (Constable, 368 pages, £18.99) When apothecary Jem Flockhart begins a redesign of her physic garden, she finds more than roots and worms under the earth. After digging up two skeletons from beneath her deadly nightshade, Jem is drawn into a dark case that played out 40 years earlier. This gothic Victorian mystery is the fifth in the Flockhart series from 'S Thomson, a university lecturer by day and crime writer by night.