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The Testers: The Poison Remembers

The Dark Hollow Series — Book 1
Gene Scott

Greenwich Palace, 1521. Thomas Tester tastes foxglove in Henry VIII’s wine. He swallows it anyway. Spitting at the king’s table could get him beheaded before the poison kills him. Across the hall, his wife Margaret hums a Welsh healing song. Their eight-year-old son Edward watches from the gallery.

The Testers have tasted poison for generations. Now the court wants their knowledge, and it wants Edward, whether his parents agree or not.

Carter County, Tennessee, 2025. Dr. Grace Blackwood has trial data and internal emails showing that Northeastern Medical sold its painkillers to Appalachian workers as non-addictive. Three young people overdosed this week. Two whistleblowers are dead. Grace’s grandmother died three months ago, and the coroner called it an accident.

Days before Grace testifies before a state oversight committee, a company representative shows her surveillance photographs of her with Caleb Tester at NA meetings. Caleb is seven months sober, and she loves him. The representative knows when her tenure review is scheduled. At three in the morning, he calls and mentions her grandmother. Someone has already cut her brake line.

In his grandfather’s locked shed, Caleb finds copper tasting spoons, glass vials, and a leather journal written in a script that blends Welsh and Cherokee. Some entries predate Tennessee statehood. The journal teaches how to recognize poison by taste. Grace lays the family’s old poison ledgers beside the company’s prescribing records.

In every court, in every century, someone profits from poison.

And someone must stand between the chalice and the crown.