Category Archives: Genres

Clever Little Thing by Helena Echlin

Charlotte’s daughter Stella is sensitive and brilliant, perhaps even a genius, but a recent change in her behavior has alarmed her mother. Following the sudden death of Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, the once disruptive and anti-social child has become docile and agreeable. But what’s unsettling is that she has begun to mirror Blanka’s personality, from Blanka’s repetitive phrases to her accent, to fierce cravings for Armenian meat stew after being raised a vegetarian. Charlotte is pregnant with her second child, and depleted and sick with the pregnancy. She is convinced that Blanka… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Suicide

The Other Brother by Tierney Page

All I ever wanted was a love like my parents had—something deep, irrevocable, and all-consuming. The kind of love that’s written about in stories. And I thought I found it with Lucas, my fiancé. We had it the house, the cat, and the promise of a future full of possibilities. Until everything fell apart. I discovered his secret. Heart-broken and betrayed, I convinced myself that I’d never find anything like what Lucas and I shared. He was my everything. Then one night, I ran into his younger brother, James. He’s a musician—complicated, intense, and nothing like Lucas. And yet, I can’t deny the pull I feel toward him. I’m drawn to him in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity by ex-partner (off-page)
  • Parent with depression (off page)
  • Death of parents (off page)

The Baby Dragon Café by Aamna Qureshi

When Saphira opens her cafe welcoming pet baby dragons, she isn’t expecting it to be quite so hard to keep the fires burning. But her young dragon patrons keep incinerating her furniture, which means selling coffee isn’t covering all her costs. Local heart-throb Aiden is a gardener, though his disobedient baby dragon is a major distraction from his beloved plants. However, Saphira’s café gives him an idea – he’ll ask Saphira to train his dragon, and pay her enough to keep the cafe afloat. They know they’re the answer to each other’s problems, but happy-go-lucky… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical injury & medical treatment
  • Death of a parent & sibling
  • Fire

Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood

Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him – it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Parent with substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use including overdose
  • Cancer
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs. Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can’t remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she’s a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death

I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent

Your favourite anti-heroine, Kitty Collins, is back! Expect more wit, sass, and, of course, murder…My name is Kitty Collins and I’m a serial killer. I don’t want to kill. It’s just so hard to resist. Some men really, really deserve it. Men like Blaze Bundy, an anonymous influencer spreading misogyny online. He’s making it very hard for me to control my murderous urges. Meanwhile I’m in the South of France to watch my mother marry a man I’ve never met. I should be drinking cocktails and focusing on my tan, not plotting a murder. But a woman’s work is never done. Surely one more teensy little kill wouldn’t hurt, would it?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Hate crimes mentioned
  • Graphic attempted sexual assault (on-page)
  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Murder (on-page)

All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

Sage’s thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn’t predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life — and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death from a heart attack mentioned
  • Hospitalisation for cancer & terminal illness discussed
  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a child & best friend in a hit-and-run drunk-driving car accident
  • Police brutality

The Launch Date by Annabelle Slator

Grace Hastings’s dream job at the popular “true love” dating app, Fate, has turned into a nightmare. Her boss is a leech, her career is stagnating, and her fiancé has just brutally dumped her. Her hope for finding her own love story is waning, and she feels like a fraud for promoting a concept she no longer believes in. When the company’s CEO offers her an opportunity to earn a big promotion, she resolves to fight her imposter syndrome to show she deserves a seat at the table. The opportunity? To launch a brand-new app focusing on IRL dating and genuine connection… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Parental infidelity mnetuoned
  • Depression
  • Workplace bullying & mentions of childhood bullying

When the Bones Sing by Ginny Myers Sain

The past three years have been tough for Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas, a small town quietly tucked away in the Ozark mountains. More than two dozen people have disappeared on the local hiking trails; there one moment, gone the next, not a trace left behind, until their buried bodies are discovered. 17-year-old Dovie doesn’t believe in magic even though she comes from a long line of women who can hear the bones of the dead sing, and for the past few years the bones have been crooning nonstop, calling out to Dovie… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & domestic violence including setting fire to a cabin with wife & child inside
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Death of a mother mentioned
  • Death of a grandfather from a fall into a ravine
  • Murder by arrow to the throat
  • Gun violence & threats of gun violence
  • Physical assault (hit in the head with a rock)
  • Disappearance of a parent discussed
  • Drowning & near-drowning
  • Accidental poisoning mentioned

There’s Always Next Year by Leah Johnson and George M. Johnson

Andy was supposed to shed her too-serious student journalist persona and reinvent herself on New Year’s Eve. Instead, she puked on her crush, dropped her phone in a fish tank, and managed to get her car stolen. Now, she only has the first day of the year to stop the gentrification that’s threatening her family’s business right her wrongs from the night before, and figure out why she feels so drawn to the electric new-girl-next-door. . How can Andy find her voice when everything’s being turned upside down? Dominique is an influencer on the verge of securing a major brand deal that will ensure his future and family legacy. But… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & classism
  • Gentrification