Category Archives: Horror

The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan

The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan

It’s been years since Grace, Felicity, Alice and Hannah were together – The Wild Girls, as they were once called, are no longer so wild. Alice has settled with a new baby and partner. Hannah is now a teacher. Grace has gone to ground. Only Felicity seems to have the same spark she once had. And now Felicity has invited them all on the weekend of a lifetime – a mini-break in Botswana to celebrate her birthday, a chance to put that night two years ago behind them, when things went so very wrong between them, and their bomb-proof friendship was shattered for ever. But on arriving.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Incest
  • Infertility
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Stormcaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Stormcaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Vagabond seafarer Evan Strangward can move wind, waves, and weather, but his magical abilities can’t protect him forever from the brutal Empress Celestine. As Celestine’s relentless bloodsworn armies grow, Evan travels to the Fells to warn the queendom that an invasion is imminent. If he can’t convince the Gray Wolf queen to take a stand, he knows that the Seven Realms will fall, and his last sanctuary will be destroyed. Among the dead will be the one person Evan can’t stand to lose. Meanwhile, the queen’s formidable… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse
  • Knife violence
  • Poisoning

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else. At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined – what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime and she fears she might lose her mind. Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Body horror
  • Animal death (cat)

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace. It includes an author’s note and acknowledgments from Arn Chorn-Pond himself. Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Rape mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Cannibalism
  • Starvation
  • Death of a child
  • Cambodia’s Killing Fields (theme)
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Stabbing
  • Gun violence

A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos

A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos

Long ago, following a cataclysm called “The Rupture,” the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands. Known now as Arks, each has developed in distinct ways; each seems to possess its own unique relationship to time, such that nowadays vastly different worlds exist, together but apart. And over all of the Arks the spirit of an omnipotent ancestor abides. Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Fatmisia
  • Forced arranged marriage
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Physical assault

This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens

This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens

Down-to-earth baker Minnie Cooper knows two things with great certainty: that her New Year’s birthday has always been unlucky, and that it’s all because of Quinn Hamilton, a man she’s never met. Minnie and Quinn were born at the same hospital just after midnight on New Year’s Day thirty years before, and not only did he edge her out by mere minutes to win the cash prize for being the first baby born in London in 1990, but he stole the name she was meant to have, as well. With luck like that, it’s no wonder each of her birthdays has been more of a disaster than the one before… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Agoraphobia
  • Anxiety

The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley

The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window by Kirsty Moseley

Liam James, boy next door and total douchebag, is my brother’s best friend. I can’t stand him. Well, that’s not strictly true, at night I see a side of him that no one else does. Every night Liam becomes my safe haven, my protector, the one to chase the demons of my abusive childhood away and hold all the broken pieces of me together. He’s cocky, he’s arrogant, and he’s also some sort of playboy in training. With his ‘hit it and quit it’ mentality, he’s the last person you’d want to fall in love with. I only wish someone had told my heart that.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut shaming
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse recounted
  • Physical child abuse
  • Miscarriage

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child neglect
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Murder

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for his family. The only thing of value he has is something he can’t sell—the thick silver cuffs he’s worn since birth. They’re clearly magicked—as he grows, they grow, and he’s never been able to get them off. One day, Han and his clan friend, Dancer, confront three young wizards setting fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea. Han takes an amulet from Micah Bayar, son of the High Wizard, to keep him from using it against them. Soon Han learns that the amulet has an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Knife violence
  • Animal cruelty

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Body shaming
  • Slut-shaming
  • Parental infidelity