The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abuse
  • Cheating
  • Suicide
  • Attempted murder
  • Animal death
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When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country’s most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him; the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in Old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Now, as the world lurches towards total war, Banks realises the time has come for him to return to the city of his childhood and at last solve the mystery – that only by his doing so will civilisation be saved from the approaching catastrophe.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Attempted suicide
  • Drug abuse
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The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

You’ve long set your heart against it, Axl, I know. But it’s time now to think on it anew. There’s a journey we must go on, and no more delay…

The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Memory loss
  • War themes
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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Medical experimentation
  • Bullying
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The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antiziganism
  • Depression
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Agoraphobia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Prescription drug abuse
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child & husband in a car accident recounted
  • Murder
  • Stalking
  • Animal death mentioned
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Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth’s magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest vampires – the ones who never die. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa’s best friend, makes her a dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them.

After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir’s Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be, hidden in the deep forests of Montana. But inside the iron gates, life is even more fraught with danger… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Slut shaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Depression
  • Self harm
  • Blood depiction
  • Animal death
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American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Days before his release from prison, Shadow’s wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Sex work
  • Cheating
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life’s lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery mentioned
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Antiziganism
  • Victim blaming
  • Slut shaming
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Murder
  • Animal death
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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • PhysicaAntisemitism
  • Rape
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Serious physical injury of a sibling
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a sibling
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Concentration camps
  • War themes
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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

When Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a ‘wrinkle in time’ for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as ‘It’. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a very special and exciting mixture of fantasy and science fiction, which all the way through is dominated by the funny and mysterious trio of guardian angels known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical child abuse
  • Disappearance of a parent
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