Alias Space and Other Stories by Kelly Robson

Alias Space and Other Stories is the first fiction collection from Nebula Award-winning writer Kelly Robson, who vaulted onto the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stage in 2015, earning spots in multiple Year’s Best anthologies. This volume collects Robson’s best stories to date, along with exciting new work, and notes to accompany each piece.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Sex work
  • Graphic sexual assault, on-page
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Animal cruelty

Adrift by Will Dean

Peggy and Drew, both aspiring writers, move to an isolated canal boat with their fourteen-year-old son. Peggy is the glue that holds their family together, even as their son is bullied relentlessly for his physique and his family’s lack of money. But when Drew becomes frustrated by his wife’s sudden writing success, he moves their boat further and further from civilization. With their increasing isolation, personal challenges become harder to ignore, even as they desperately try to break toxic generational patterns. But when Drew’s gaslighting becomes too much for Peggy to take, it sets off a catastrophic series of events.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Domestic abuse & gaslighting
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Drug overdose
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Animal death

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & eugenics
  • Medical experimentation & body horror (on-page)
  • Death of a grandmother from cancer recounted
  • Financial difficulties (theme)

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

Lydia is hungry. She’s always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside – the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can’t eat any of these things. Her body doesn’t work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs’ blood in London–where she is living away from… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Colonialism
  • Rape recounted (off-page)
  • Workplace sexual harassment
  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Stillbirth
  • Murder

The Wonderland Murders by Lanie Olson

Things are different when you’re a burden. I was dumped at Carroll’s Home for Troubled Youth by parents I can’t quite remember—or maybe I came here on my own. No … I was found guilty of a crime and that’s why I’m here. It all depends on who you ask or choose to believe, I guess. I spend my days with my best friend who’s done way more heinous things than I have. He wants me to remember—to tell him stories about being a stranger in a strange land, but I don’t want to talk about it because when you talk about things, that’s how they become real again. Because it… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Beastiality
  • Hallucinations
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Blood & gore depiction

Wonderland by Zoje Stage

The Bennett family – artist parents and two precocious children – are leaving their familiar urban surroundings for a new home in far upstate New York. They’re an hour from the nearest city, a mile from the nearest house, and everyone has their own room for the very first time. Shaw, the father, even gets his own painting studio, now that he and his wife Orla, a retired dancer, have agreed that it’s his turn to pursue his passion. But none of the Bennetts expect what lies waiting in the lovely woods, where secrets run dark and deep. Orla must finally find a way to communicate with – not just… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Starvation
  • Gun violence

The Good House by Tananarive Due

Angela hoped her grandmother’s famous “healing magic” could save her failing marriage while she and her family lived in the old house the summer of 2001. Instead, an unexpected tragedy ripped Angela’s family apart. Two years later, Angela is moving past her grief and is finally ready to revisit the rural house she loved so much as a child. But back in Sacajawea, she discovers she hasn’t been the only one to suffer a shocking loss. Since she left, there have been more senseless tragedies, and Angela wonders whether they are related somehow. Could the events be… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Emesis

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Slavery & racial slurs
  • Infidelity
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Elder abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Self-mutilation
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic murder, including filicide by drugging & asphixiation
  • Stalking
  • Animal death (dog)

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due

Due’s second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense—all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due’s stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope. In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due’s trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Police brutality
  • Pandemic
  • Animal death

Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond

In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation. Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire trive render… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic slavery & racism (on-page)
  • Rape & sexual assault (on-page)