Literary Fiction – Page 17 – Trigger Warning Database

The Kindest Lieby Nancy Johnson

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Drug abuse
Substance addiction
Gang violence
Lynching
Police brutality
Poverty

The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer Smith

The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith

Greta James’s meteoric rise to indie stardom was hard-won. Before she graced magazine covers and sold-out venues, she spent her girlhood strumming her guitar in the family garage. Her first fan was her mother, Helen, whose face shone bright in the dusty downtown bars where she got her start—but not everyone encouraged Greta to follow her dreams. While many daydream about a crowd chanting their name, her father, Conrad, saw only a precarious life ahead for his daughter. Greta has spent her life trying to prove him wrong, but three months after Helen’s sudden death, and weeks before the launch of her high-stakes sophomore… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother from cancer

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful; her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night? While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Rape

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse
Self-harm
Death of a child
Murder
Animal abuse

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Kidnapping & hostage situation

Goodbye Again by Mariah Stewart

Goodbye Again by Mariah Stewart

In the wake of her daughter’s unexplained suicide and her husband Jim’s sudden abandonment, Liddy Bryant is determined to move on and make some positive changes in her life. In her hometown of Wyndham Beach, the neglected and shuttered bookstore is also in need of renewal, and Liddy recognizes an opportunity to get herself and the bookshop back on track. With a little help from her friends, she’s well on her way. Local contractor Tuck Shelby has been a friend of Liddy’s forever. He’s made himself indispensable in the rehab of her shop—and in her life—but now he wants out of the friend zone. Then Jim returns with a long-overdue apology, hoping for forgiveness and a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Divorce
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a daughter from suicide

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

The Lathams seem to have it all. Health, wealth, a vibrant family life – as Mary Beth Latham contemplates a life built around home, friends and community, she has every reason to feel fulfilled and content. That is, until one of her sons begins to unravel. As Mary Beth focuses on him, she discovers that the comfortable life she has spent years constructing has been shattered by a single traumatic moment. Forced to confront her own demons, Mary Beth must face the knowledge that one secret, shameful act has set the course of her fate…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Depression
Suicide by hanging
Murder
Stalking

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together–but they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewellery designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia’s entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and New Age mantra they know by heart. Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Re… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Eating disorder
Body horror
Drowning
Stalking

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Margot Lee’s mother, Mina, isn’t returning her calls. It’s a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unravelling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother’s life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother. Interwoven with Margot’s present-day search is Mina’s story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Attempted rape & sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Domestic abuse mentioned
Suicidal ideation
Cancer
Death of a mother
Death of a daughter
Death of a husband
Gun violence
Stalking mentioned

When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Mahmoud’s passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power. In Kabul, we meet Fereiba, a schoolteacher who puts her troubled childhood behind her when she finds love in an arranged marriage. But Fereiba’s comfortable life implodes when the Taliban rises to power and her family becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime. Forced to flee with her three child… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Arranged marriage
Displacement & refugee experiences