Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

CHARLIE: “I have been going out with Nick Nelson for two years. He likes rugby, Formula 1, dogs, the Marvel universe, the sound felt-tips make on paper, rain and drawing on shoes. He also likes me.” NICK: “Things me and Charlie Spring do together include: Watch films. Sit in the same room on different laptops. Text each other from different rooms. Make out. Make food. Make drinks. Get drunk. Talk. Argue. Laugh. Maybe we’re kind of boring. But that’s fine with us.” Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple that they’re inseparable. But now that Nick is… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Eating disorder
  • Self-harm recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Bullying recounted

Hooked by Emily McIntire

James has always had one agenda: destroy his enemy, Peter Michaels. When Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy shows up in James’s bar, he sees his way in. Seduce the girl and use her for his revenge. It’s the perfect plan until things in James’s organization begin to crumble. Suddenly, he has to find the traitor in his midst, and his plan for revenge gets murkier as James starts to see Wendy as more than just a pawn in his game. Wendy has been cloistered away most of her life by her wealthy cold father, but a spontaneous night out with friends turns into an intense and addictive love affair with the dark and brooding James… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Paedophilia
  • Drugging
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including amputation and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent in a car accident recounted
  • Death of a relative in a plane crash
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Consensual choking (breath pay)

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make them… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Paedophilia & sexual assault of a child
  • Body horror
  • Starvation
  • Cannibalism
  • Infanticide, on-page
  • Torture
  • Animal death (cat)

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbours. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice. When Margot returns home to help care for her sick uncle, it feels like walking into a time capsule… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault of a minor, off-page
  • Domestic abuse
  • Relative with dementia
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Alcoholism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident
  • Bullying

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors–until he forms a remarkable friendship with… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Drug use, off-page
  • Death of a spouse from cancer
  • Death of a child from drowning

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings, he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. “There is a balm in Gilead,” his neighbour Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, “to make the wounded whole.” While Gamache doesn’t talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

Christmas is approaching, and in Québec it’s a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn’t spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive for Christmas in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Mystified by Myrna’s reluctance… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Drug abuse
  • Infertility
  • Physical injury
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

The Hangman by Louise Penny

The Hangman by Louise Penny

On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods near the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree. The man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa. The man might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible. Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail of clues, he opens a door into the past. And he learns the true reason why the man came to Three Pines. A quick and easy read for people on the go.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Car accident

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder. No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he’s dealing with someone quite extra… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body-shaming
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Eating disorder
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder