Literary Fiction – Page 26 – Trigger Warning Database

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms

Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.

Usually grounded and mild-mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophist… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Spousal abandonment
Miscarriage recounted

Night Road by Kristin Hannah

Night Road by Kristin Hannah

Jude Farraday is a happily married, stay-at-home mom who puts everyone’s needs above her own. Her twins, Mia and Zach, are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill enters their lives, no one is more supportive than Jude. A former foster child with a dark past, Lexi quickly becomes Mia’s best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. But senior year of high school brings unexpected dangers and one night, Jude’s worst fears are confirmed: there is an accident. In an instant, her idyllic life is… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse & neglect mentioned
Foster care system
Depression
Suicidal ideation
Miscarriage mentioned
Car accident

The Baby is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Baby is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib. At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby’s cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby’s cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexism
Child neglect
Cheating
Alcohol consumption, on-page
Recreational drug use, on-page
COVID-19 (theme)
Emesis
Physical illness & tribal marking disfigurement of a baby
Blood depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of an uncle & husband recounted
Animal slaughter, on-page

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Show Tunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house. The house may look respectable on the outside but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface,… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Antisemitism
Racism
Drug use & abuse

The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake

The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake

Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolours, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections. Women face dire consequences if caught practising medicine but in Croft’s private clinic… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexism
Death of parents from illness during a pandemic

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right. Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spr… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Colourism
Death of a parent recounted, off-page

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard travelling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother’s home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother’s past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different …

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Suicide
Drug use
Blood & gore depiction
Murder

Saturdays at Noon by Rachel Marks

Saturdays at Noon by Rachel Marks

Emily just wants to keep the world away. She doesn’t want anyone to know all the ways her life is messed up. Going to anger management every Saturday, talking to strangers, was not part of the plan.

Jake just wants to keep his family together. He’s also messed everything up. Going to anger management is now his best hope for bonding with his six-year-old Alfie. Emily can’t understand why Jake… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
Sexual assault
Physical child abuse
Alcoholism
Substance addiction
Blood depiction

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Misogyny
Homomisia
Antisemitism
Chronic illness
Plague
Death of a parent
Murder
Exile
Forced conversion

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Slavery
Suicide mentioned