Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.

Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered in a town that wants no prying eyes… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a cousin
  • Murder
  • Car accident
  • Animal death
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Joshua Dread by Derf Backderf

Joshua Dread by Derf Backderf

For Joshua Dread, middle school is proving to be, well, awkward. Not only do bullies pick on him, but do you see those supervillains over there trying to flood the world? The ones that everyone, including his best friend Milton, are rooting for Captain Justice to take down? They’re the Dread Duo, and they just happen to be his parents.

As if trying to hide his identity wasn’t hard enough, Joshua has started leaving a trail of exploding pencils and scorched handprints in his wake and only Sophie, the new girl in town with a mysterious past, seems unsurprised. When a violent attack at the Vile Fair makes it clear someone is abducting supervillains and that his parents may very well be next, Joshua must enlist both Sophie and Milton’s help to save them.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Bullying
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Kent State by Derf Backderf

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, 4 students were killed and 9 shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory.

A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same Guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My FriendD ahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Gun violence, including the shooting of unarmed protestors
  • Arson
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The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell

Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Torture
  • Vivisepulture (being buried alive)
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Candor by Pam Bachorz

Candor by Pam Bachorz

Oscar Banks lives in the pristine town of Candor. Son of the mayor, he is good-looking, smart and popular. And he knows something he’s not supposed to – he knows about the brainwashing Messages embedded in the music that plays all over the town.

But Oscar has found a way to burn counter-Messages that keep him real. Up to now, it’s all worked perfectly. There’s just one problem: Nia Silva, the newest Candor arrival. What will Oscar risk to keep the Nia he loves rather than watch her become a Candor automaton?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a sibling recounted
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A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been selected out of hundreds of other candidates to fly to France and help with the excavation of a vast, underground palace buried a hundred feet below the suburbs of Paris. Built in the 1780’s to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries. Or so she thought.

But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Hallucinations & delusions mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Dead bodies
  • Human experimentation
  • Needles
  • Hospital
  • Decapitation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault
  • Torture & sensory deprivation
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Car accident
  • Plane crash mentioned
  • Bullying
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The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann

The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann

Pikey Thomas doesn’t know how or why he can see the changeling girl. But there she is. Not in the cold, muddy London neighborhood where Pikey lives. Instead, she’s walking through the trees and snow of the enchanted Old Country or, later, racing through an opulent hall. She’s pale and small, and she has branches growing out of her head. Her name is Henrietta Kettle.

Pikey’s vision, it turns out, is worth something. Worth something to Hettie’s brother—a brave adventurer named Bartholomew Kettle. Worth something to the nobleman who protects him. And Pikey is not above bartering—Pikey will do almost anything to escape his past; he’ll do almost anything for a life worth living… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Starvation mentioned
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Battle scenes
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The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

Don’t get yourself noticed and you won’t get yourself hanged. In the faery slums of Bath, Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie live by these words. Bartholomew and Hettie are changelings–Peculiars–and neither faeries nor humans want anything to do with them.

One day a mysterious lady in a plum-colored dress comes gliding down Old Crow Alley. Bartholomew watches her through his window. Who is she? What does she want? And when Bartholomew witnesses the lady whisking away, in a whirling ring of feathers, the boy who lives across the alley–Bartholomew forgets the rules and gets himself noticed… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse mentioned
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Pure Dynamite by Lauren Bach

Pure Dynamite by Lauren Bach

FBI Special Agent Adam Duval is deep undercover with one mission: gain the trust of his cellmate, Lyle McEdwin, one of the notorious McEdwin family, by staging a prison break with him. Lyle promises they can hide out with his family in their secluded bunker, and that’s just the opportunity Adam’s been looking for – until it all goes wrong. Lyle is injured in a shootout with an off-duty cop, and Adam has no choice but to kidnap Dr. Renata Curtis from her clinic in order to keep Lyle alive…

Eluding the police, the trio reaches the compound, where it’s clear the McEdwins want Renata dead. She can identify them and their top-secret location. As Lyle grows more unstable by the hour, Adam faces his toughest mission yet: how to protect Renata without giving himself away to the rest of the McEdwin clan. But a much bigger game is in play, and Adam is the only one who can stop a network of domestic terrorists from executing their deadly plot…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse mentioned
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The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

Meet the Wild Ones: girls who have been hurt, abandoned, and betrayed all their lives. It all began with Paheli, who was once betrayed by her mother and sold to a man in exchange for a favor. When Paheli escapes, she runs headlong into a boy with stars in his eyes. This boy, as battered as she is, tosses Paheli a box of stars before disappearing.

With the stars, Paheli gains access to the Between, a place of pure magic and mystery. Now, Paheli collects girls like herself and these Wild Ones use their magic to travel the world, helping the hopeless and saving others from the fates they suffered… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child trafficking
  • Rape, implied
  • Suicide
  • Forced pregnancy
  • Genital mutilation mentioned
  • Murder of a child
  • Torture mentioned
  • Drowning
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