Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis: Hardcover; 288 pages / English

[Atria] In the early 1900s, a young gardener at a lush English manor falls in love with her employer whose past is shrouded in deadly secrets—from the author of the “twisty, Gothic thriller” (Entertainment Weekly) Spitting Gold. In 1925, Vee Morgan arrives at Harfold Manor, a once-grand country estate in Wiltshire, to begin her new post as gardener. She hopes the crumbling manor will offer her a fresh start, far from the darkness of her own past. But the place is shadowed by grief and memories of long-faded glory, its rooms haunted by the only surviving member of the family, Lady Arabella Lascy. Vee is fascinated by her enigmatic new employer, a woman obsessed with the curse she believes has killed her family one by one and is coming for her next. Arabella's only hope for escape is a local folktale: the fabled dancing hare said to have blessed Hardfold centuries ago. Drawn ever deeper into the house’s secrets and Lady Arabella’s spell, Vee soon realizes that the greatest danger may lie not in Harfold’s haunting history but in the truths she has tried so hard to bury. Lush, atmospheric, and charged with desire and dread, A Slow and Secret Poison is a gothic tale of obsession, betrayal, and the perilous bargains we strike with the past.