Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart–the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Infertility & loss of pregnancy
  • COVID-19 pandemic including death from COVID (theme)

Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander

Meredith Maggs has everything a person needs. A best friend in Sadie. A beloved cat in Fred. Jigsaws to fill the time. Recipes to perfect. Even a weekly visit from the Tesco delivery guy. So what if she hasn’t left the house in 1,214 days? That her memories are treacherous, and it’s getting harder to ignore the estranged sister knocking at her door. How long can one woman keep the world out? How long before she invites in what’s out there? And how long does it take to discover the person you were meant to be?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse & domestic violence
  • Familial estrangement discussed
  • Attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-harm
  • Agoraphobia & depression (protagonist)
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage
  • Cancer
  • Death of an infant

The Things We Didn’t Know by Elba Iris Pérez

Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town that is the only home they’ve known. With no plan and no money, she leaves them with family in the mountainside villages of Puerto Rico and promises to return. Months later, when Andrea and Pablo are brought back to Massachusetts, they find their hometown significantly changed. As they navigate the rifts between their family’s values and all-American culture and face the harsh realities of growing up, they must embrace both the triumphs and heartache that mark the journey to adulthood.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence & child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Vietnam War
  • Colonisation

Dominoes by Phoebe Mcintosh

Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before the wedding of a young couple. Layla is a mixed-race woman–with a Black, Jamaican mother and a white father she’s never met–and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. But the commonalities between the two outweigh their differences; funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon. Layla’s best friend, Sera, isn’t so sure-about Andy, or the fact that her best frien… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & discussions of police brutality

Worry by Alexandra Tanner

It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression & anxiety
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Disordered eating & a secondary character with an eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Animal cruelty

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drug use & abuse
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Substance addiction
  • Death of a parent from cancer

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

It’s 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie’s starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Classism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Animal death (dog)

Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao

Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit and all sasshole. As the King’s ward, she has spent the past ninety years running errands, dodging the taunts of the spiteful hulijing courtiers, and trying to control her explosive temper – with varying levels of success. So when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all. With the help of a gentle mortal tasked with setting up the Central Bank of Hell, Jing embarks on a wild chase for intel, first through Hell and then mortal Shanghai… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Panic attacks
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Bullying

A Little Ray of Sunshine by Kristan Higgins

A kid walks into your bookstore and… guess what? He’s your son. The one you put up for adoption eighteen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise! And a huge surprise it is. It’s a huge surprise to his adoptive mother, Monica, who thought she had a close relationship with Matthew, her nearly adult son. Until he secretly arranged a vacation to Cape Cod so he could meet his birth mother… without a word to her. It’s also a surprise to Harlow, the woman who secretly placed him for adoption so many years ago. She has built a quiet life, running a bookstore with her grandfather, and is happily single… though she can’t help gravitating toward Grady Byrne, an… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Unplanned pregnancy recounted