Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi book cover

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question — How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Coming out themes mentioned
  • Child sexual abuse (central theme, not on-page or described)
  • Child abuse
  • Surgery mentioned
  • Hormone replacement therapy mentioned
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Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi book cover

Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves–now protective, now hedonistic–move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.

Narrated by the various selves within Ada and based in the author’s realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Sexual abuse
  • Eating disorder/s
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Substance abuse
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World After by Susan Ee

World After by Susan Ee

World After by Susan Ee book cover

When a group of people capture Penryn’s sister Paige, thinking she’s a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken. Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige. Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels’ secret plans where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go. Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can’t rejoin the angels, can’t take his rightful place as… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & sexism (on-page)
  • Parent with paranoid schizophrenia with mentions of hallucinations & delusions
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction, including body horror, dead bodies, involuntary body modifications, medical experimentations, and cannibalism
  • Torture & psychological torture (on-page)
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun & sword violence
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Explosions
  • Building collapse recounted

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Angelfall by Susan Ee book cover

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back. Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel. Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny & slut-shaming
  • Sexual harassment & sex work, implied
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Parent with paranoid schizophrenia with mentions of delusions and hallucinations
  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood and injury depiction, including dead bodies and body parts, cannibalism, dismemberment, scars, human experimentation, and nonconsensual body modification (theme)
  • Death of children discussed
  • Murder and attempted murder
  • Knife & gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Torture
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • War themes
  • Animal attack

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge book cover

In 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren’t affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ that led to this book.

Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism and racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Murder
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Wild Women & the Blues by Denny S. Bryce

Wild Women & the Blues by Denny S. Bryce

1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour is a sharecropper’s daughter, willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. Dreamland offers a path to the good life, socializing with celebrities like Louis Armstrong and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But Chicago is also awash in bootleg whiskey, gambling, and gangsters. And a young woman driven by ambition might risk more than she can stand to lose.

2015: Film student Sawyer Hayes arrives at the bedside of 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour, still reeling from a devastating loss that has taken him right to the brink. Sawyer has rested all his hope on this frail but formidable woman, the only living link to the legendary Oscar Micheaux. If he’s right–if she can fill in the blanks in his research, perhaps he can complete his thesis and begin a new chapter in his life. But the links Honoree makes are not ones he’s expecting . . .

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape (ch 43)
  • Attempted suicide mentioned (chp 15)
  • Cancer mentioned (briefly in chp 15)
  • Emesis (chp 13)
  • Death of a parent & sibling
  • Car accident
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Temeraire by Naomi Novik

Temeraire by Naomi Novik

Also called His Majesty’s Dragon.

Captain Will Laurence has been at sea since he was just twelve years old; finding a warmer berth in Nelson’s navy than any he enjoyed as the youngest, least important son of Lord Allendale. Rising on merit to captain his own vessel, Laurence has earned himself a beautiful fiancée, society’s esteem and a golden future. But the war is not going well. It seems Britain can only wait as Napoleon plans to overrun her shores.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Minor sex work shaming & slurs
  • Suicide*
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use (smoking)
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a colleague (off-page)
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Bombings
  • War themes (Napoleonic Wars)
  • Military violence & naval warfare
  • Animal death (graphic, multiple scenes)
  • Animal cruelty & abuse
  • Animal illness & injury
  • Animal attack
  • Death of an animal companion

*Note: An enemy air force captain chooses to stay on-board his dying dragon as it falls & plummets into the ocean.

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After the Rain by Nnedi Okorafor

After the Rain by Nnedi Okorafor, adapted by John Jennings & illustrated by David Brame

During a furious storm a young woman’s destiny is revealed . . . and her life is changed forever.

In a small Nigerian town during a violent and unexpected storm, a Nigerian-American woman named Chioma answers a knock at her door and is horrified to see a boy with a severe head wound standing at her doorstep. He reaches for her, and his touch burns like fire. Something is very wrong. Haunted and hunted, Chioma must embrace her heritage in order to survive.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood & gore depiction, including mutilation
  • Loss of limb (on-page)
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The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor

The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor

In West Africa in 2070, after fifteen-year-old “shadow speaker” Ejii witnesses her father’s beheading, she embarks on a dangerous journey across the Sahara to find Jaa, her father’s killer, and upon finding her, she also discovers a greater purpose to her life and to the mystical powers she possesses.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Beheading
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
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Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.

Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Outing
  • Bury Your Gays trope
  • Death of a sex worker
  • Gun violence
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