Drawing on her background as a practising pharmacist, educator, writer, and lover of elegant prose, Gail Bell has written her first full-length work of non-fiction, The Poison Principle, which was published in June 2001 by Picador and went straight into the bestseller lists where it stayed for ten weeks. A few months later the book was bought by Macmillan U.K. and St. Martins Press USA, where it was released in hardcover in July and October 2002 respectively.

The Poison Principle is part memoir, part mystery, part journey through the dark corridors of poison history. It took ten years, off and on, to complete, much of that time spent reading through libraries in Australia, America and England- anywhere there was an archive of good poison stories. The main strand of the book, the story of her grandfather William Macbeth, was less easy to access as it was locked up in family secrets. Gail's father, Macbeth's son, had to give his permission for her to go public with what she discovered, not an easy decision given that Macbeth was accused of poisoning his two sons with strychnine.

Gail Bell was born in Sydney, is a graduate in pharmacy and education from the University of Sydney, and has worked in Australia and England. She lived and worked (teaching English) in Holland for five years, has travelled extensively with her photographer husband Andrew, and has published travel essays from their time in India.

Gail's second book SHOT: A Personal Response to Guns and Trauma was published by Picador in November 2003.

In June 2005 Black Inc Books published "The Worried Well" by Gail Bell as Volume 18 in its series The Quarterly Essay.

Gail is a past Member of the Committee of Management of the Australian Society of Authors.