Literary Fiction – Page 17 – Trigger Warning Database

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered as Nampeshiweisit—a person in a unique relationship with a dragon. Unfortunately for Anequs, the Anglish conquerors of her land have different opinions. They have a very specific idea of how a dragon should be raised, and who should be doing the raisi… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Misogyny & sexism
Slavery
Hate crime
Death of parents recounted
Police brutality
Genocide & colonialism discussed

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed. Without an Ang male to punish, the…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Graphic misogyny (theme)
Spousal & parental abandonment
Physical & verbal domestic by parent-in-law
Torture

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Emotional child abuse discussed (on-page)
Hallucinations (protagonist)
Physical injury & illness (on-page)
Emesis
Death of a father from suicide by drowning after terminal cancer discussed (off-page)
Graphic animal death & injury (theme) including the protagonist being swallowed alive by a sperm whale

*Context : The protagonist’s father uses dive weights to drown after his terminal cancer diagnosis. A general warning for content sensitive for readers with claustrophobia.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors–until he forms a remarkable friendship with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Parental abandonment
Drug use, off-page
Death of a spouse from cancer
Death of a child from drowning

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Kyuri is a beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies. Down the hall in their apartment building… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Cheating*
Parental abandonment
Body dysmorphia
Suicide & suicidal ideation
Alcoholism
Mutism
Pregnancy
Miscarriage
Cancer
Emesis
Surgery recounted & discussed
Murder of sex workers discussed
Physical assault, on- & off-page

*Context : Miho’s boyfriend is engaged to another woman and cheats on her with a sex worker.

This Weightless World by Adam Soto

This Weightless World by Adam Soto

From the streets of gentrified Chicago to the tech boom corridors of Silicon Valley, This Weightless World follows a revolving cast of characters after alien contact upends their lives. We are introduced to Sevi, a burned-out music teacher desperate for connection; Ramona, his on-again, off-again computer programmer girlfriend; and Sevi’s cello protege Eason, struggling with the closure of his high school; after a mysterious signal arrives from outer space. When the signal–at first seen as a sign of hope–stops as abruptly as it started, they are all forced to reckon with its aftermath. In San Francisco, Sevi fights to find mean… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Drug use
Police brutality

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers take advantage of their strict father’s absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his brothers. This prophecy unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Incest
Necrophilia
Animal death

Lanny by Max Porter

Lanny by Max Porter

There’s a village an hour from London. It’s no different from many others today: one pub, one church, redbrick cottages, some public housing, and a few larger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs. This village belongs to the people who live in it, to the land and to the land’s past. It also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, a mythical figure local schoolchildren used to draw as green and leafy, choked by tendrils growing out of his mouth, who awakens after a glorious nap. He is listening to this twen… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Animal death

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