Category Archives: Genres

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun.

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism & Nazism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Plane crash
  • World War Two

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other ‘midnight’s children’ all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse
  • Incest
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol & drug abuse
  • Torture

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Overstory by Richard Powers

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.

These four, and five other strangers – each summoned in different ways by trees – are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Suicide
  • Police brutality
  • Torture
  • Asphyxiation
  • Eco-terrorism

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.

Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Medical examination
  • Trauma (theme)
  • Gun violence

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, and Donna Tartt. But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Homomisia
  • Rape
  • Cheating
  • Alcoholism
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Overdose
  • Death from a heart attack
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Drowning
  • Gun violence
  • Car accident
  • Blackmail

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

Delayed in London, Ted Severson meets a woman at the airport bar. Over cocktails they tell each other rather more than they should, and a dark plan is hatched – but are either of them being serious, could they actually go through with it and, if they did, what would be their chances of getting away with it?

Back in Boston, Ted’s wife Miranda is busy site managing the construction of their dream home, a beautiful house out on the Maine coastline. But what secrets is she carrying and to what lengths might she go to protect the vision she has of her deserved future?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Cheating
  • Murder
  • Stabbing
  • Car accident

Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill

Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill and illustrated by Leomacs & Riccardo La Bella

June Branch visits her boyfriend, Liam, on Brody Island for a relaxing last weekend of summer. After an escaped group of criminals breaks into the house that June and Liam are watching, Liam is taken by them. June grabs a strange Viking axe and flees from the intruders. When one of the attackers finds her, she swings the axe and takes off his head, which rolls away and begins to babble in terror. For June to uncover the truth, she’ll need to hear the facts straight from the mouths of her attackers, with…or without their bodies attached.

Collects issues #1-7.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisic slur
  • Rape mentioned
  • Forced sex work mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Torture

Locke and Key, Volume Six by Joe Hill

Locke & Key, Vol. 6: Alpha & Omega by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Roríguez

The shadows have never been darker and the end has never been closer. Turn the key and open the last door; it’s time to say goodbye. Omega and Alpha, the final two storylines of the New York Times bestselling series, are collected together to offer a thunderous and compelling conclusion to Locke & Key. An event not to be missed!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Home invasion

Locke and Key, Volume Five by Joe Hill

Locke & Key, Vol. 5: Clockworks by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Roríguez

The sprawling tale of the Locke family and their mastery of the whispering iron thunders to new heights as the true history of the family is revealed to Tyler and Kinsey. Zack Wells assumes a new form, Tyler and Kinsey travel through time, and surprises beyond imagination will be revealed.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Sexism
  • Homomisia
  • Sexual assault

Locke and Key, Volume Four by Joe Hill

Locke & Key, Vol. 4: Keys to the Kingdom by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Roríguez

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key unwinds into its fourth volume in Keys to the Kingdom. With more keys making themselves known, and the depths of the Locke family’s mystery ever-expanding, Dodge’s desperation to end his shadowy quest drives the inhabitants of Keyhouse ever closer to a revealing conclusion.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Animal abuse