Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Where Butterflies Wander by Suzanne Redfearn

After a tragic accident claims the life of one of her children, Marie Egide is desperate to carve out a fresh start for her family. With her husband and their three surviving children, Marie travels to New Hampshire, where she plans to sell a family estate and then, just maybe, they’ll be able to heal from their grief. Marie’s plans are thwarted when she realizes a war veteran known by locals as “the river witch” is living in a cabin on the property, which she claims was a gift from Marie’s grandfather. If Davina refuses to move on, Marie won’t be able to either. The two women… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a daughter
  • Injury & scarring obtained during military deployment in Afghanistan
  • Animal injury (dog)

The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce

Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago. With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & divorce recounted
  • Anxiety & panic attacks

The Perfect Find by Tia Williams

Jenna Jones, former It-girl fashion editor, is forty, broke and desperate for a second chance. When she’s dumped by her longtime fiancé and fired from Darling magazine, she begs for a job from her arch nemesis, Darcy Vale. Darcy, the beyond-bitchy publisher of StyleZine.com, agrees to hire her rival – only because her fashion site needs a jolt from Jenna’s old school cred. But Jenna soon realizes she’s in over her head. Jenna’s working with digital-savvy millennials half her age, has never even “Twittered,” and pretends to still be a Fashion Somebody while living a style lie (she sold her designer wardrobe to afford her sketched-out… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & mentions of lynching
  • Miscarriage
  • Terminal cancer

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse

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