Category Archives: Contemporary

The Candle Palace by Devney Perry

The Candle Palace by Devney Perry

Sometimes a single flame can ignite a love that lasts a lifetime. Milo Phillips knows the meaning of pain. Suffering through the most intense physical agony of his life, he’s confined to a hospital bed to bear it alone. More than once, he wishes he’d died in the explosion that melted and mangled his skin. Darkness consumes him, snuffing all the joy in his life and leaving an empty hole in its place. But one day, a flicker of light sneaks into his hospital room, driving away some of the hopelessness. For the first time in months… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Drug use mentioned
  • Burns
  • Explosion

The Birthday List by Devney Perry

The Birthday List by Devney Perry

I carry a journal with me. A journal with a list. Take a karate class. Go skydiving. Learn to play the ukulele. Say yes to everything for an entire day. The list goes on, line by line, of youthful dreams. Take a karate class. Go skydiving. Learn to play the ukulele. Say yes to everything for an entire day. The list goes on, line by line, of youthful dreams. It should have marked the first day of a new life. A fresh start. But then Cole Goodman waltzed through the door and brought with him the past. A man who shattered my heart. A man I tried to forget. Maybe it’s a good thing he insists on sticking around. Because the only way I’ll finish the list is with Cole’s help. And then I can finally say goodbye.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a husband, on-page
  • Murder

The Coppersmith Farmhouse by Devney Perry

The Coppersmith Farmhouse by Devney Perry

One old farmhouse brought them together. It could also tear them apart. Gigi has just uprooted her whole world to start a new life. The unexpected gift of a farmhouse in small-town Montana is just what she and her daughter need to escape big-city loneliness. The last thing she needs is attitude from the town’s sheriff, the most perfectly attractive and ruggedly handsome man she’s ever laid eyes on—and a complete jerk. Jess knows all about women like Gigi. Beautiful. Sexy. Scheming. She’s stolen his sanctuary, the farmhouse that should have been his. But along with a face…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Drug use
  • Murder
  • Physical assault

Extraordinary Birds by Sandy Stark-McGinnis

Extraordinary Birds by Sandy Stark-McGinnis

Eleven-year-old December knows everything about birds, and everything about getting kicked out of foster homes. All she has of her biological mum is the book she left behind, The Complete Guide to Birds, Volume One, and a photo with a message: ‘In flight is where you’ll find me.’ December knows she’s truly a bird, just waiting for the day she transforms and flies away to reunite with her mum. The scar on her back must be where her wings have started to blossom – she just needs to practise and to find the right tree. She has no choice; it’s the only story that makes sense…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment mentioned
  • Scars
  • Bullying

Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin

Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin

When Trixie picks up her best friend Lux for their weekend getaway, they’re looking to forget the despair of being trapped in their dead-end rustbelt town. The girls are packing light: a supply of Diet Coke and an ‘89 Canon to help Lux frame the world in a sunnier light; half a pack of cigarettes that Trixie doesn’t really smoke, and a knife she’s hanging on to for a friend that she’s never used before. But a single night of violence derails their trip, and the girls go from ordinary high schoolers to wanted fugitives. Trying to stay ahead of the cops and a hellscape of media atten… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Slut shaming
  • Victim blaming
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Domestic abuse
  • Sexual assault
  • Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Gun violence

Color Outside the Lines edited by Sangu Mandanna

Color Outside the Lines edited by Sangu Mandanna with contributions from Anna-Marie McLemore, Elsie Chapman, Karuna Riazi, Lydia Kang, L.L. McKinney, Lauren Giabaldi, Tara Sim, Caroline Tung Richmond, Kelly Zekas, Tarun Shanker, Samira Ahmed, Adam Silvera, Eric Smith, Lori M. Lee and Michelle Ruiz Keil

When people ask me what this anthology is about, I’m often tempted to give them the complicated answer: it’s about race, and about how being different from the person you love can matter but how it can also not matter, and it’s about Chinese pirate ghosts, black girl vigilantes, colonial India, a flower festival, a garden of poisons, and so, so much else. Honestly, though? I think the answer’s much simpler than that. Color outside the Lines is a collection of stories about young, fierce, brilliantly hopeful people in love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, racism & antisemitism
  • Dieting & disordered eating
  • Hospitalisation
  • Police brutality
  • Explosion
  • Bullying

Sweet Soul by Tillie Cole

Sweet Soul by Tillie Cole

Life has never been easy for 20-year-old Levi Carillo. The youngest of the Carillo boys, Levi is nothing like his older brothers. He isn’t dark in looks or intimidating to everyone he meets. In fact, he’s quite the opposite. Haunted by a crippling shyness and the tragic events of his past, Levi spends his days with his head buried in his books or training hard for his college football team. Too timid to talk to girls, Levi stays as far away as possible and completely on his own until he saves the life of a troubled pretty blonde, a troubled pretty blonde that might just be the exception to his rule… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Suicide
  • Homelessness
  • Bullying

Sweet Rome by Tillie Cole

Sweet Rome by Tillie Cole

It makes me laugh when I hear folks think Molly and I rushed into things too fast, spouting that we couldn’t possibly have felt what we did for each other in such a short space of time. I say, how the hell would they know? We made it, didn’t we? She became my whole life, didn’t she? And as for my folks not being real, being true? Tell that to me aged ten, eleven, twelve—damn, all my bastard life—when I was never enough when I was beaten until I bled for being too good at football and not being everything they’d dreamed: the perfectly dutiful son. Tell that to thousands of kids around the world getting wailed on by asshole parents for… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of parents

Sweet Hope by Tillie Cole

Sweet Hope by Tillie Cole

My name is Ally Prince and I’ve always been unlucky in love. I don’t know why, I just always… have. When all of my best friends were falling for their soul mates in College, I was left behind. I was Ally, the pretty cousin of superstar quarterback, Romeo Prince. I was Ally, the best friend to the most amazing group of girls I’ve ever known—a title I loved, but one I became tired of ‘just’ being. And I was Ally, the one on which they could all rely. But to me, I was Ally, the girl with the heart no one had claimed. And I was, Ally, the girl, who underneath it all, was heart-breakingly lonely… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Drug use
  • Death of a parent recounted

Sweet Home by Tillie Cole

Sweet Home by Tillie Cole

At age twenty, Molly Shakespeare knows a lot. She knows Descartes and Kant. She knows academia and Oxford. She knows that the people who love you leave you. ⁣⁣⁣She knows how to be alone. But when Molly leaves England’s grey skies behind to start a new life at the University of Alabama, she finds that she has a lot to learn — she didn’t know a summer could be so hot, she didn’t know students could be so intimidating, and she certainly didn’t know just how much the folks of Alabama love their football. When a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Miscarriage, on-page
  • Death of parents, off-page
  • Death of a grandparent, off-page