Science Fiction – Page 32 – Trigger Warning Database

Signal Boost by Alyssa Cole

Signal Boost by Alyssa Cole

In a secluded cabin, John and his loved ones have survived. He should feel grateful. But his family is in his face 24/7, he has to watch his best friend, Arden, and brother, Gabriel, flaunt their love, and as a techie in a Luddite world he’s pretty much useless. The cabin is brimming with people, but he feels utterly alone.

Until he catches Mr Tall, Blond and Gorgeous raiding their garden. Mykhail is an astrophysics student, he makes John’s gaydar ping like crazy and he thinks he knows what caused the devastation… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Depression
Assisted suicide mentioned
Suicidal ideation

Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole

Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole

Arden Highmore was living your average postgrad life in Rochester, New York, when someone flipped the “off” switch on the world. No cell phones, no power, no running water—and no one knows why. All she and her roommate, John, know for sure is that they have to get out, stat. His family’s cabin near the Canadian border seemed like the safest choice.

It turns out isolation doesn’t necessarily equal safety… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Attempted rape, on-page

Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer

Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer

Alyssa Farshot has spent her whole life trying to outrun her family legacy. Her mother sacrificed everything to bring peace to the quadrant, and her uncle has successfully ruled as emperor for decades. But the last thing Alyssa wants is to follow in their footsteps as the next in line for the throne. Why would she choose to be trapped in a palace when she could be having wild adventures exploring a thousand-and-one planet in her own ship?… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction
Dead bodies
Physical injuries
Medical treatment
Grief & loss depiction (theme)
Death of a mother recounted
Death of an uncle
Death of a friend
Murder & attempted murder
Gun violence
Explosions & bombings
Plane crash
War themes discussed

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley’s chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world’s most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Medical experimentation
Death of parents
Murder

A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness.

May 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one-hundred-and-fifty years before Mallory was strangled in the same spot… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Drug use
Murder & attempted murder
Stabbing
Strangulation

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Blood & gore depiction, including blood-drinking & bloodletting
Torture

Afterland by Lauren Beukes

Afterland by Lauren Beukes

Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole’s own ruthless sister, Billie — all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won’t be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.

To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Cancer

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job – missing persons.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Drug use
Child soldiers
Poverty
Refugee experiences

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

You’ve got to be careful when you’re chasing a murderer through Bulikov, for the world is not as it should be in that city. When the gods were destroyed and all worship of them banned by the Polis, reality folded; now stairs lead to nowhere, alleyways have become portals to the past, and criminals disappear into thin air.

The murder of Dr Efrem Pangyui, the Polis diplomat researching the Continent’s past, has begun something and now whispers of an uprising flutter… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Homomisia
Graphic torture

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours. But this version of 1950’s America is characterized by a significant event: The Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons, left a trail of fiery destruction in their path, and took to the skies. Seemingly for good. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved Aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of, even more so than her crush on Sonja, her schoolmate… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny (theme)
Parental abandonment
Emotional & physical child abuse
ALcoholism
Panic attack
Death of a father, off-page
Death of a mother from cancer, on-page
Fire mentioned
Animal cruelty & death