Mystery & Thriller – Page 53 – Trigger Warning Database

These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling

These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling

Hannah’s a witch, but not the kind you’re thinking of. She’s the real deal, an Elemental with the power to control fire, earth, water, and air. But even though she lives in Salem, Massachusetts, her magic is a secret she has to keep to herself. If she’s ever caught using it in front of a Reg (read: non-witch), she could lose it. For good. So, Hannah spends most of her time avoiding her ex-girlfriend (and fellow Elemental Witch) Veronica, hanging out with her best friend, and working at the Fly by Night Cauldron selling candles and crystals to tourists, goths, and local Wiccans… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Persecution for witchcraft
Queermisia
Cheating mentioned
Parental abandonment mentioned
Toxic relationship
Sexual assault, on-page
Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction
Physical injuries & burns, including serious injury of a loved one
Resuscitation
Hospital
Surgery discussed
Death of a father
Murder & attempted murder, including an attempt to burned the protagonist at the stake
Car accident, on-page
Near-drowning incident
Home invasion
House fire (two scenes)
Animal death (sacrifice) & dead bodies

Fan Club by Erin Mayer

Fan Club by Erin Mayer

Day after day our narrator, a gloomy millennial, searches for meaning beyond her vacuous job at a women’s lifestyle website—entering text into a computer system while she watches their beauty editor unwrap box after box of perfectly packaged bits of happiness. Then, one night at a dive bar, she hears a message in the newest single by child-actor-turned-international-pop star Adriana Argento, and she is struck. Soon she loses herself to the online fandom, a community whose members feverishly track Adriana’s every move… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexual harassment
Recreational drug use
Abortion mentioned

Trouble is my Business by Lisa Walker

Trouble is my Business by Lisa Walker

Olivia Grace, recently retired teen PI, has her priorities sorted. Pass first-year law, look after her little sister, and persuade her parents to come back from a Nepali monastery to resume … well, parenting. But after Olivia’s friend Abbey goes missing in Byron Bay, she can’t sit back and study Torts. It’s time to go undercover as hippie-chick Nansea, in hippie-chic Byron Bay: hub of influencers and international tourism, and home of yoga, surfing and wellness culture, against a breathtaking backdrop, a short drive from Olivia’s Gold Coast home… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Disappearance of a friend

The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon

The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon

In the third in the popular Adrien English series, the “ill-starred and bookish” mystery writer has to contend with a Satanic cult, a handsome university professor and his on-again/off-again relationship with the eternally conflicted LAPD Detective Jake Riordan. And, oh, yes, murder…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Homomisia
Racism
Stalking
Satanic cults

Four Point by Max Ellendale

Four Point by Max Ellendale

Thirty-two bodies, twenty years, and a cold case that lives inside her alone. Detective Sali James teeters on the edge of sanity as she’s forced to unearth her darkest days in order to stop Washington’s most elusive serial killer.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexual assault
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Panic attacks
Suicide mentioned
Graphic drug use
Emesis
Murder

The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg

The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg

Returning to her hometown of Fjallbacka after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy. The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems that she has taken her own life. Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspi… Read more

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Domestic abuse
Murder

The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

Those are the rules in Rowan’s Glen, a remote farming community in the Missouri Ozarks where Ivy Templeton’s family has lived for centuries. It’s an old-fashioned way of life, full of superstition and traditions, and sixteen-year-old Ivy loves it. The other kids at school may think the Glen kids are weird, but Ivy doesn’t care—she has her cousin Heather as her best friend. The two girls share everything with each other—or so Ivy thinks. When Heather goes missing after a May Day celebration, Ivy discovers that both her best friend and her beloved hometown are as full of secrets as the woods that surround them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Bury Your Gays trope
Murder
Physical assault
Animal cruelty

Dead End Girls by Wendy Heard

Dead End Girls by Wendy Heard

In one week, Maude will be dead. At least, that’s what she wants everyone to think. After years of research, Maude has decided to fake her own death. She’s figured out the how, the when, the where, and who will help her unsuspectingly. The why is complex: revenge, partly. Her terrible parents deserve this. But there’s also l’appel du vide, the call of the void, that beckons her toward a new life where she will be tied to no one, free and adrift. Then Frankie, a step-cousin she barely knows, figures out what she’s plotting, and the plan seems like it’s ruined. Except Frankie… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Lesbomisia
Outing
Dysphoria
Sexual harassment
Abandonment
Child abuse
Drug use
Blood & injury depiction
Murder & attempted murder
Fire
Explosion
Kidnapping
Bullying

She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard

She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard

The summer is winding down in San Diego. Veronica is bored, caustically charismatic, and uninspired in her photography. Nico is insatiable, subversive, and obsessed with chaotic performance art. They’re artists first, best friends second. But that was before Mick. Delicate, lonely, magnetic Mick: the perfect subject, and Veronica’s dream girl. The days are long and hot―full of adventure―and soon they are falling in love. Falling so hard, they never imagine what comes next. One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Emotional child abuse
Toxic mother-daughter relationship
Panic attack
Blood depiction
Death of a child
Murder
Kidnapping
Fire
Strangulation
Car accident
Drowning
Vivisepulture (buried alive)
Animal death
Animal cruelty

The Ophelia Girls by Jane Healey

The Ophelia Girls by Jane Healey

In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings—and a little bit obsessed with each other. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaus. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks. Twenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Homomisia
Cheating
Adult-minor relationship
Paedophilia & grooming
Drowning