Category Archives: Fantasy & Paranormal

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

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism discussed & mentions of disfiguremisia
  • Transphobia, misgendering & deadnaming
  • Emotional & physical intimate partner violence
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Drug dependency discussed (protagonist)*
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Animal death (dog, deer, off-page)

Context : The protagonist uses opioids after surgery and undergoes withdrawal after quitting without medical supervision

The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty’s Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess. Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can’t remember what she’s done–but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh’s adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet–a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale. On the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny & ableism
  • Infidelity
  • Amnesia & memory loss
  • Loss of autonomy (demonic possession)
  • Animal death

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls–Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle–took the oath to join Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she’s a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transphobia, deadnaming & misgendering including outing
  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Animal death