Nightshade for Warning

Elliana Allbright runs Scents and Nonsense, a perfumery and gift shop in the small California town of Poppyville, with an enchanted garden behind it and a corgi named Dash underfoot. Her scent work has a way of nudging things toward the truth, which is useful, because Poppyville keeps producing bodies.

In Nightshade for Warning, the second Enchanted Garden Mystery, a caustic critic whose reviews can sink a small business ends up dead, and the suspicion lands on someone Ellie cares about. She works the case the way she works a formula, by paying attention to what people give off rather than what they say, and the answer turns out to be rooted in the town's own history.

Bailey Cattrell writes a cosy mystery with a light thread of garden magic: no gore, plenty of plants and perfume lore, and a village cast with long memories. Published in 2017, it follows Daisies for Innocence and precedes Marigolds for Malice.