The Education of Margot Sánchez by Lilliam Rivera

The Education of Margot Sánchez by Lilliam Rivera

Things/people Margot hates: Mami, for destroying my social life; Papi, for allowing Junior to become a Neanderthal; Junior, for becoming a Neanderthal; this supermarket; everyone else.

After “borrowing” her father’s credit card to finance a more stylish wardrobe, Margot Sánchez suddenly finds herself grounded. And by grounded, she means working in her family’s struggling grocery store to pay off her debts.

With each order of deli meat she slices, Margot can feel her carefully cultivated prep school reputation slipping through her fingers, and she’s willing to do anything to get out of this punishment. Lie, cheat, and maybe even steal… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual harassment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Physical assault
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XL by Scott Brown

XL by Scott Brown

Will Daughtry is a late bloomer–at least that’s what everyone tells the high school sophomore, who is just shy of five feet. By his sixteenth birthday, Will is resigned, bitterly, to being tiny forever. His only comfort is his best friend and stepbrother, Drew (6’3″), and their pal Monica (5’10”), the girl Will’s secretly pined for since fifth grade. With them, he feels whole; everyone else sees him as a half man. But when Will stumbles onto Drew and Monica kissing, he realizes he’s on his own.

That’s when he starts to grow. And grow fast. Astonishingly fast… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Bullying
  • Cyberharassment
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Heroine by Mindy McGinnis

Heroine by Mindy McGinnis

Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That role brings with it violent throw downs and access to the hottest boydega clubs, but the sixteen-year-old grows weary of the life. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city’s benevolent founder and cross the border in a search for a mysterious gang the Ashé Ryders. Led by a reluctant guide, Nalah battles other crews and her own doubts, but the closer she gets to her goal, the more she loses sight of everything—and everyone— she… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-harm
  • Substance addiction (theme), including addiction recovery, withdrawal, recreational drug use & abuse, prescription drug abuse & overdose
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Dead bodies mentioned
  • Physical injury
  • Car accident

Dealing in Dreams by Lilliam Rivera

Dealing in Dreams by Lilliam Rivera

Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That role brings with it violent throw downs and access to the hottest boydega clubs, but the sixteen-year-old grows weary of the life. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city’s benevolent founder and cross the border in a search for a mysterious gang the Ashé Ryders. Led by a reluctant guide, Nalah battles other crews and her own doubts, but the closer she gets to her goal, the more she loses sight of everything—and everyone— she cares about… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Familial abandonment
  • Child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use mentioned
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Knife violence
  • Use of a taser
  • Attempted drowning
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Punk 57 by Penelope Douglas

Punk 57 by Penelope Douglas

In fifth grade, my teacher set us up with pen pals from a different school. Thinking I was a girl, with a name like Misha, the other teacher paired me up with her student, Ryen. My teacher, believing Ryen was a boy like me, agreed. It didn’t take long for us to figure out the mistake. And in no time at all, we were arguing about everything. And that was the start. For the next seven years, it was us.

Her letters are always on black paper with silver writing. Sometimes there’s one a week or three in a day, but I need them. She’s the only one who keeps me on track, talks me down, and accepts everything I am. We only had three rules. No social media, no phone numbers, no pictures. We had a good thing going. Why ruin it? … Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut shaming
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Depression
  • Drug abuse
  • Death of a sibling
  • Bullying
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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.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

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

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • War themes
  • Animal death
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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.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

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

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Slut shaming
  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Suicide
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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.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

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