Category Archives: Fantasy & Paranormal

Stranger Skies by Pascale Lacelle

Opening locked doors has a price—even for those who hold a key. After going through the door that called to them both in dreams, Emory and Romie find themselves in the the same verdant world written of in Song of the Drowned Gods, albeit a twisted, rotting version of it. A sinister force has awoken with their arrival, intent on destruction as it spills across realms, and now Emory and Romie must stop it before it reaches their own shores. Meanwhile, Baz and Kai are desperate to follow their friends through the door to other worlds, but a mishap pulls them back in time instead—where they come face to face with Cornus Clover… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy mentioned
  • Knife, sword & weapon violence including decapitation (monsters)
  • Blood, injury and minor body horror (necromancy, a secondary character being reborn after being buried alive, etc.)
  • Mentions of death from choking, strangulation, drowning, stabbing & explosions
  • Loss of autonomy (demonic possession)
  • Physical beating of a child recounted

Through the Midnight Door by Katrina Monroe

The Finch sisters once spent long, hot summers exploring the dozens of abandoned properties littering their dying town―until they found an impossible home with an endless hall of doors…and three keys left waiting for them. Curious, fearless, they stepped inside their chosen rooms, and experienced horrors they never dared speak of again. Now, years later, youngest sister Claire has been discovered dead in that old, desiccated house. Haunted by their sister’s suicide and the memories of a past they’ve struggled to forget, Meg and Esther find themselves at bitter odds… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Depression (protagonist)
  • Suicide & self-harm
  • Kidnapping
  • Death of a child

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman

On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier. As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny
  • Death of a parent from diabetes

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible. Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction & emesis
  • Murder
  • Smoking
  • Animal & human medical experimentation

Quicksilver by Callie Hart

Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate. In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water. Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember. But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone. When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape of the protagonist’s mother & sex work mentioned
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Forced sterilization recounted
  • Blood, injury & gore depiction including decapitation & emesis
  • Murder & torture
  • War themes
  • Extreme childhood poverty recounted

Thrall by Avon Gale and Roan Parrish

Happy couple Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra have begun to garner national attention for their quirky New Orleans true-crime podcast, Shadowcast. When Lucy’s brother Harker disappears while researching the popular new dating app Thrall, they’re thrown into a real-life mystery. Aided by their social media expert, Arthur, and Harker’s professor, Van Helsing, they follow the trail, hoping to find Harker before it’s too late. When their investigation crosses the path of a possible serial killer, the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur. And as they race against the app’s countdown clock, so does the line between friendship… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Death of parents recounted
  • Animal death mentioned

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again.Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Forced arranged marriage
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Death of a parent (off-page)
  • Attempted murder by poisoning
  • Attempted kidnapping of a child
  • War themes

Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Evie Sage has never been happier to be the assistant to The Villain. Who would have thought that working for an outrageously handsome (shhh, bad for his brand) evil overlord would be so rewarding? Still, the business of being bad is demanding, the forces of good are annoyingly persistent, and said forbidding boss is somewhat… er, out-of-evil-office. But Rennedawn is in grave trouble, and all signs—Kingsley’s included—point to catastrophe. Something peculiar is happening with the kingdom’s magic, and it’s made The Villain’s manor vulnerable to their enemies… including… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including emesis, decapitation & severed body parts
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physcial assault
  • Kidnapping & imprisonment
  • Incarceration of an abusive parent
  • Disappearance & presumed death of a mother
  • Animal harm

Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home a bit complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather’s ghost didn’t give him such scathing looks of disapproval as he went through a second, HRT-induced puberty, or if he didn’t have the pressure of all those relatives—living and dead—judging every choice he makes. It’s no wonder that Ezra runs as far away from the family business as humanly possible. But when the floor of his dream job drops out from under him and his mother uses the family Passover seder to tell everyone that she’s running away with the rabbi’s wife, Ezra finds himself back in the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misgendering mentioned
  • Infidelity mentioned (secondary charactes)
  • Hospitalisation for injury & depiction of a dead body
  • Childbirth (on-page)
  • House fire

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she’s not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor’s tale. So bet it. The wicked are better dressed, with… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Cancer (protagonist)
  • Murder, torture & flogging