Literary Fiction – Page 19 – Trigger Warning Database

And I Do Not Forgive You by Amber Sparks

And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges by Amber Sparks

Exciting fans of such writers as Kelly Link, Karen Russell, and Carmen Maria Machado with prose that shimmers and stings, Amber Sparks holds a singular role in the canon of the weird. Now, she reaches new, uncanny heights with And I Do Not Forgive You. In “Mildly Happy, With Moments of Joy,” a friend is ghosted by a simple text message; in “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park,” a teen precariously coming of age in a trailer park befriends an actual ghost. At once humorous and unapologetically fierce, these stories shine an interrogating light on the adage… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Incest
Animal death

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Misogyny
Persecution for witchcraft
Martial rape & sexual assault
Arranged marriage
Miscarriage
Murder
Immolation
Drowning
Torture

Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto

Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto

Mariamar, a woman whose sister was killed in a lioness attack, finds her life thrown into chaos when the outsider Archangel Bullseye, the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, arrives at the request of the village elders. Mariamar’s father imprisons her in her home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel tracks the lionesses in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to them than meets the eye, he starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more dangerous until it’s… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Poverty

Together We Will Go by J Michael Straczynski

Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski

Mark Antonelli, a failed young writer looking down the barrel at thirty, is planning a cross-country road trip. He buys a beat-up old tour bus. He hires a young army vet to drive it. He puts out an ad for others to join him along the way. But this will be a road trip like no other: His passengers are all fellow disheartened souls who have decided that this will be their final journey—upon arrival in San Francisco, they will find a cliff with an amazing view of the ocean at sunset, hit the gas, and drive out of this world. The unlikely companions… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Fatmisia
Rape
Suicide
Drug use

The Tiger Mom’s Tale by Lyn Liao Butler

The Tiger Mom’s Tale by Lyn Liao Butler

Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she’s neither white enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought she’d finally found a place where she belonged. But that was years ago, and even there, some never truly considered her to be Taiwanese. Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she’s neither white enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Car accident
Death of a father

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbour Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate….

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Attempted rape
Substance addiction
Murder
Torture
War themes

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

When his master’s eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or “Titch,” is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, Titch abandons everything to save him… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Racism & racial slurs
Body mutilation & disfigurement
Torture mentioned

Indelible by Adelia Saunders

Indelible by Adelia Saunders

Magdalena has an unsettling gift. She sees writing on the body of everyone she meets – names, dates, details both banal and profound – and her only relief from the onslaught of information is to take off her glasses and let the world recede. Mercifully, her own skin is blank. Magdalena has an unsettling gift. She sees writing on the body of everyone she meets – names, dates, details both banal and profound – and her only relief from the onslaught of information is to take off her glasses and let the world recede. Mercifully, her own… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Suicide & attempted suicide
Sexual harassment

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first daughter in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events. The ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Told in the form of a letter to someone Violeta loves above all others, this is the story of a hundred-year life – of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Racism
Adult-minor relationship
Domestic abuse
Suicide
Murder
War themes

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Human trafficking
Rape
Death of an infant
Murder
Torture
Lynching