Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favourite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Infidelity recounted
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Anxiety & panic attacks including nightmare & peladophobia
  • Parent with depression
  • Self-harm & attempted suicide of a parent recounted

Context : The protagonist’s high school boyfriend cheated on his girlfriend with her. She also did not realise some of her previous lovers were married. A secondary character is divorcing his wife for infidelity

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed―tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne. For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism discussed
  • Disability from factory pollution (theme)

Family Family by Laurie Frankel

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero. Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie. Soon she’s at the centre of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, sexism & body-shaming mentioned
  • Divorce mentioned
  • Anxiety & mentions of eating disorders
  • Substance addiction & drug abuse mentioned
  • Abortion & miscarriages mentioned
  • Death of a mother mentioned

Foster by Claire Keegan

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in there care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household – where everything is so well tended to – and the summer must come to an end.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcoholism
  • Poverty

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Religious bigotry
  • Suicidal ideation & mentions of suicide

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude – and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny discussed

Wet Paint by Chloë Ashby

Since the death of her best friend Grace, twenty-six-year-old Eve has learned to keep everything and everyone at arm’s length. Safe in her detachment, she scrapes along waiting tables and cleaning her shared flat in exchange for cheap rent, finding solace in her small routines. But when a chance encounter at work brings her past thundering into her present, Eve becomes consumed by painful memories of Grace. And soon her precariously maintained life begins to unravel: she loses her job, gets thrown out of her flat, and risks pushing away the one decent man who… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The Reindeer and the Submarine by Beverley McWilliams

An orphaned reindeer with no antlers, Pollyanna is raised by Igor, a Sámi herder, and is more at home in the company of people than other reindeer. When she discovers Igor is leaving for war, Pollyanna decides to follow, but en route, she is captured and gifted to the crew of a British submarine, the HMS Trident. Life onboard the Trident brings more than a few surprises, and Pollyanna – with her love of food – gets into all kinds of mischief. But she also makes friends, becomes part of the crew, and uses her courage and cheekiness to comfort her companions in the dark days of the war.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Naval warfare in World War Two (theme) including mentions of sunk submarines during skirmishes and on-page use of gun/torpedo.

Never Die by Rob J. Hayes

Ein is on a mission from God. A God of Death. Time is up for the Emperor of Ten Kings and it falls to a murdered eight year old boy to render the judgement of a God. Ein knows he can’t do it alone, but the empire is rife with heroes. The only problem; in order to serve, they must first die. Ein has four legendary heroes in mind, names from story books read to him by his father. Now he must find them and kill them, so he can bring them back to fight the Reaper’s war.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia and body-shaming
  • Alcohol consumption (multiple on-page scenes)
  • A secondary character is dying of leprosy with some mentions of his symptoms including loss of fingers and teeth
  • Graphic fight scenes, including battle scenes/raids, destruction and pillaging of villages, hand-to-hand combat, and gun- & sword violence (on-page)
  • Murder by gunshot, poisoning, and stabbing (on page)
  • Attempted murder by strangulation

Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

In a country called ‘Town’, Su is found dead in an abandoned car. The suspected killer is presumed to come from the Saha Estates. Town is a privatised country, controlled by a secretive organisation known as the Seven Premiers. It is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots and those who have the very least live on the Saha Estates. Among their number is Jin-Kyung, a young woman whose brother, Dok-yung, was in a relationship with Su and quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. When Dok-yung disappears, Jin Ky-ung is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & classism
  • Sexual assault
  • Pregnancy & abortion
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Unethical human experimentation & medical procedures (on-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality
  • Animal cruelty