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Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum

Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum

What secrets will people keep—or reveal—to protect those they love? This novel, set against the frightening backdrop of an encroaching fire season, sparks reflection about friendship, the allure of romantic love, and loyalty to family. Can a single kiss change everything?

It was a year on fire. They fell in love. Someone was bound to get burned… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Homomisia
Child abuse & neglect
Coming out themes
Self-harm mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Arson

Admission by Julie Buxbaum

Admission by Julie Buxbaum

It’s good to be Chloe Wynn Berringer. She’s headed off to the college of her dreams. She’s going to prom with the boy she’s had a crush on since middle school. Her best friend always has her back, and her mom, a B-list Hollywood celebrity, may finally be on her way to the B+ list. It’s good to be Chloe Wynn Berringer–at least, it was, until the FBI came knocking on her front door, guns at the ready, and her future went up in smoke. Now her mother is under arrest in a massive college admissions bribery scandal. Chloe, too, might be facing charges, and even time behind bars. The public is furious, the press is rabid, and the US attorney is out for blood… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Substance addiction mentioned
Overdose
Cancer mentioned
Cyberbullying

Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum

Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum

Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: in the picture, Abbi (aka “Baby Hope”) wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Blackmail
9/11 (theme)

Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help? … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Cancer
Grief & loss depiction
Death of mother & father
Death of sibling
Death of a friend
Bullying

What to Say Next by Julie Buxbaum

What to Say Next by Julie Buxbaum

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David. Kit appreciates David’s blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit’s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad’s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they’ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism & ableist slurs
Death of a parent
Bullying

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Doro knows no higher authority than himself. An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire. He fears no one — until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbours and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her. No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu — until she meets Doro… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Rape
Sexual assault of a minor
Forced breeding

Patternmaster by Octavia Butler

Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler

IIn the far future, the human race is divided into two groups striving for power. The Patternmaster rules over all, the leader of the telepathic Patternist race whose thoughts can destroy or heal at his whim. The only threat to his power are the Clayarks, mutant humans created by an alien pandemic, who now live either enslaved by the Patternists or in the wild.

Coransee, son of the ruling Patternmaster, wants the throne and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means venturing into the wild mutant-infested… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Torture, off-page

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler

Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler

In an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare, Blake Maslin is traveling with his teenage twin daughters when their car is ambushed. Their attackers appear sickly yet possess inhuman strength, and they transport Blake’s family to an isolated compound. There, the three captives discover that the compound’s residents have a highly contagious alien disease that has mutated their DNA to make them powerful, dangerous, and compelled to infect others. If Blake and his daughters do not escape, they will be infected with a virus that will either kill them outright or transform them into outcasts whose very existence is a threat to the world around them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Pandemic
Torture
Kidnapping
Imprisonment

Dawn by Jim Butcher

Dawn by Jim Butcher

In a world devastated by nuclear war with humanity on the edge of extinction, aliens finally make contact. They rescue those humans they can, keeping most survivors in suspended animation and begin the slow process of rehabilitating the planet.

When Lilith Iyapo is “awakened,” she finds that she has been chosen to revive her fellow humans in small groups by first preparing them to meet the utterly terrifying Oankali, then training them to survive on the wilderness that the planet has become… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Slavery
Rape
Medical experimentation

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders. But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Blood & gore depiction
War themes
Animal injury