Category Archives: Genres

A House of Rage and Sorrow by Sangu Mandanna

A House of Rage and Sorrow by Sangu Mandanna

Esmae once wanted nothing more than to help her golden brother win the crown of Kali but that dream died with her best friend. Alexi broke her heart, and she vowed to destroy him for it. And with her sentient warship Titania beside her, how can she possibly fail? As gods, beasts, and kingdoms choose sides, Alexi seeks out a weapon more devastating than even Titania. Past lives threaten the present. Old enemies claim their due. And Esmae cannot outrun the ghosts and the questions that haunt her. What really happened to her father? What was the third boon her mother asked of Amba? For in the shadows, lurking in wait, are… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend recounted
  • Infanticide mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife & sword violence
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
  • War, rebellion & royal coup (theme)

Color Outside the Lines edited by Sangu Mandanna

Color Outside the Lines edited by Sangu Mandanna with contributions from Anna-Marie McLemore, Elsie Chapman, Karuna Riazi, Lydia Kang, L.L. McKinney, Lauren Giabaldi, Tara Sim, Caroline Tung Richmond, Kelly Zekas, Tarun Shanker, Samira Ahmed, Adam Silvera, Eric Smith, Lori M. Lee and Michelle Ruiz Keil

When people ask me what this anthology is about, I’m often tempted to give them the complicated answer: it’s about race, and about how being different from the person you love can matter but how it can also not matter, and it’s about Chinese pirate ghosts, black girl vigilantes, colonial India, a flower festival, a garden of poisons, and so, so much else. Honestly, though? I think the answer’s much simpler than that. Color outside the Lines is a collection of stories about young, fierce, brilliantly hopeful people in love.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, racism & antisemitism
  • Dieting & disordered eating
  • Hospitalisation
  • Police brutality
  • Explosion
  • Bullying

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules…with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical sibling abuse recounted (protagonist)
  • Emotionally abusive relationship recounted (protagonist)
  • Alcohol consumption (on-page)
  • Minor physical injury and depiction of dead bodies
  • Death of parents from cancer, illness and fire mentioned
  • Death of a father recounted (protagonist)
  • Parent with depression mentioned (protagonist)

Sweet Soul by Tillie Cole

Sweet Soul by Tillie Cole

Life has never been easy for 20-year-old Levi Carillo. The youngest of the Carillo boys, Levi is nothing like his older brothers. He isn’t dark in looks or intimidating to everyone he meets. In fact, he’s quite the opposite. Haunted by a crippling shyness and the tragic events of his past, Levi spends his days with his head buried in his books or training hard for his college football team. Too timid to talk to girls, Levi stays as far away as possible and completely on his own until he saves the life of a troubled pretty blonde, a troubled pretty blonde that might just be the exception to his rule… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Suicide
  • Homelessness
  • Bullying

Sweet Rome by Tillie Cole

Sweet Rome by Tillie Cole

It makes me laugh when I hear folks think Molly and I rushed into things too fast, spouting that we couldn’t possibly have felt what we did for each other in such a short space of time. I say, how the hell would they know? We made it, didn’t we? She became my whole life, didn’t she? And as for my folks not being real, being true? Tell that to me aged ten, eleven, twelve—damn, all my bastard life—when I was never enough when I was beaten until I bled for being too good at football and not being everything they’d dreamed: the perfectly dutiful son. Tell that to thousands of kids around the world getting wailed on by asshole parents for… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of parents

Sweet Hope by Tillie Cole

Sweet Hope by Tillie Cole

My name is Ally Prince and I’ve always been unlucky in love. I don’t know why, I just always… have. When all of my best friends were falling for their soul mates in College, I was left behind. I was Ally, the pretty cousin of superstar quarterback, Romeo Prince. I was Ally, the best friend to the most amazing group of girls I’ve ever known—a title I loved, but one I became tired of ‘just’ being. And I was Ally, the one on which they could all rely. But to me, I was Ally, the girl with the heart no one had claimed. And I was, Ally, the girl, who underneath it all, was heart-breakingly lonely… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Drug use
  • Death of a parent recounted

Sweet Home by Tillie Cole

Sweet Home by Tillie Cole

At age twenty, Molly Shakespeare knows a lot. She knows Descartes and Kant. She knows academia and Oxford. She knows that the people who love you leave you. ⁣⁣⁣She knows how to be alone. But when Molly leaves England’s grey skies behind to start a new life at the University of Alabama, she finds that she has a lot to learn — she didn’t know a summer could be so hot, she didn’t know students could be so intimidating, and she certainly didn’t know just how much the folks of Alabama love their football. When a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Miscarriage, on-page
  • Death of parents, off-page
  • Death of a grandparent, off-page

Sweet Fall by Tillie Cole

Sweet Fall by Tillie Cole

Lexington “Lexi” Hart is a senior at the University of Alabama. Surrounded by her best friends, her loving family and having fulfilled her life-long dream of making the Crimson Tide cheer squad, everything is going exactly as she always dreamed it would. But beneath her happy exterior, demons lurk, threatening to jeopardize everything Lexi has worked to achieve. When events in her life become too much to cope with, Lexi finds herself spiralling down into the realm of her biggest fear. Lexi falls hard, victim once again to the only thing that can destroy her and, on the way, finds herself falling straight into the dangerous.⁣⁣⁣.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent
  • Organised crime & gang violence

Sick Fux by Tillie Cole

Sick Fux by Tillie Cole

When Ellis Earnshaw and Heathan James met as children, they couldn’t have been more different. Ellis was loud and beautiful – all blond hair, bright laughs and smiles. Heathan was dark and brooding and obsessed with watching things die. The pair forged an unlikely friendship, unique and strange. Until they were ripped apart by the sick cruelty of others, separated for years, both locked in a perpetual hell. Eleven years later, Heathan is back for his girl. Back from a place from which he thought there was no return. Back to seek revenge on those who wronged them. Tim.⁣⁣⁣.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia
  • Sexual assault
  • Non-consensual abortion
  • Infertility & forced sterilizsation
  • Blood & knife play
  • Torture

Reap by Tillie Cole

Reap by Tillie Cole

Raised as a prototype for the Georgian Bratva’s obedience drug, 221 fails to think, act, or live for himself; he’s his master’s perfectly-crafted killing puppet. Standing at six-foot-six, weighing two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, and unrivaled in to-the-death combat, 221 successfully secures business for the Georgian Mafiya Boss of NYC, who rules the dark world of the criminal underground. Until his enemies capture him. Talia Tolstaia dreams to break from the heavy clutches of Bratva life. She dreams of another life–away from the stifling leash of her Russian Bratva Boss.⁣⁣⁣.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Murder
  • Captivity