rachel @ typed truths

Mists of the Serengeti by Leylah Attar

Mists of the Serengeti by Leylah Attar

When a bomb explodes in a mall in East Africa, its aftershocks send two strangers on a collision course that neither one sees coming.

Jack Warden, a divorced coffee farmer in Tanzania, loses his only daughter. An ocean away, in the English countryside, Rodel Emerson loses her only sibling.

Two ordinary people, bound by a tragic afternoon, set out to achieve the extraordinary, as they make three stops to rescue three children across the vast plains of the Serengeti—children who are worth more dead than alive… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a sister, on-page
Death of a daughter, on-page
Murder
Bombing
Kidnapping

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a parent
Murder
Gun violence
War themes
Animal death

When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins

When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins

It’s been two years since Jeff Hart was kidnapped. Now, his abductor is releasing him to return home. When Jeff finds his family, he feels shell-shocked and unable to tell anyone what happened. He can’t believe any of his family or friends will understand what he has been through.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
Child pornography
Alcohol consumption
Knife violence
Whipping
Kidnapping and captivity

The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in precolonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. These two women’s lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Slut shaming
Slavery
Rape
Suicide

The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

Catalina Martín, finally, not single. Her family is happy to announce that she will bring her American boyfriend to her sister’s wedding. Everyone is invited to come and witness the most magical event of the year.

That would certainly be tomorrow’s headline in the local newspaper of the small Spanish town I came from. Or the epitaph on my tombstone, seeing the turn my life had taken in the span of a phone call.

Four weeks wasn’t a lot of time to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic–from NYC and all the way to Spain–for a wedding… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexism
Dieting & restrictive eating
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent

To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames

To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames

Moon Basin has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember. It started when an explosion in the mine killed sixteen people. The disaster made it impossible to live in town, with underground fires spewing ash into the sky. But life in New Basin is just as fraught. The ex-mining town relies on its haunted reputation to bring in tourists, but there’s more truth to the rumors than most are willing to admit, and the mine still has a hold on everyone who lives there.

Clem and Nina form a perfect loop—best friends forever, and perhaps something more. Their circle opens up for a strange girl named Lisey with a knack for training crows, and Piper, whose father is fascinated… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Blood & gore depiction
Death of a parent
Animal death

Future Girl by Asphyxia

Future Girl by Asphyxia

Piper’s mum wants her to be ‘normal’, to pass as hearing and get a good job. But when peak oil hits and Melbourne lurches towards environmental catastrophe, Piper has more important things to worry about, such as how to get food.

When she meets Marley, a CODA (child of Deaf adult), a door opens into a new world – where Deafness is something to celebrate rather than hide, and where resilience is created through growing your own food rather than it being delivered on a truck… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Abusive relationship
Animal death

The Golden Legend by Cate Ashwood

The Golden Legend by Cate Ashwood

After working with the same partner for almost fifteen years, she ditched me for a cushy teaching job. And I thought things couldn’t get worse. I was wrong. Because walking into the When shots ring out on the Grand Trunk Road, Nargis’s life begins to crumble around her. Her husband, Massud – a fellow architect – is caught in the crossfire and dies before she can confess to him her greatest secret. Under threat from a powerful military intelligence officer, who demands that she pardon her husband’s American killer, Nargis fears that the truth about her past will soon be exposed. For weeks someone has been broadcasting people’s secrets from the minarets of the city’s mosques and, in a country where the accusation of blasphemy is a currency to be bartered, the mysterious broadcasts have struck fear in Christians and Muslims alike.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Religious persecution
Suicide
Death of a sibling
Death of a parent
Death of a spouse
Bombings

Fair Trade by Cate Ashwood

Fair Trade by Cate Ashwood

Except we hadn’t just hooked up. Nope. What we’d done went so far beyond an anonymous one-nighter. And now I’m not sure what to do with myself, because being with Nick isn’t just against station rules. It’s against mine. But I can’t seem to stop, and what’s even more concerning… I can’t make myself care.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Homomisia & homomisic slurs

Complicated by Kristen Ashley

Complicated by Kristen Ashley

Dealing with the fallout of a divorce he never wanted and setting up a new home for his kids, Hix becomes that guy, that one he never wanted to be, and puts a stop to things before they can even start. Protecting his kids, and himself, is his only priority.

Greta, on the other hand, has found the place for her and the brother she adores that’s perfect for them—a sleepy little town in Nebraska. She’s learned from life that there are no hopes and dreams. The only thing to look forward to is peace. And that’s what she works hard to build for herself and her brother. Right up until Hix walks into her life… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse & neglect
Traumatic brain injury
Murder, on-page
Car accident mentioned