Category Archives: BIPOC Lit

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet). But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Spousal emotional, verbal & financial abuse recounted
  • Dead bodies
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a sibling
  • Death of a spouse
  • Murder

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Ever since a man was found dead in Vera’s teahouse, life has been good. For Vera that is. She’s surrounded by loved ones, her shop is bustling, and best of all, her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend! All thanks to Vera, because Tilly’s girlfriend is none other than Officer Selena Gray. The very same Officer Gray that she had harassed while investigating the teahouse murder. Still, Vera wishes more dead bodies would pop up in her shop, but one mustn’t be ungrateful, even if one is slightly…bored. Then Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is obviously in need of her kindly guidance… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Suicide
  • Dieting discussed
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones

Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die. Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone’s got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You’re from this town. Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She’s just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she was rescued by a horse and bravely defeated the killer, alone, bra-less. Her story is already a legend. She’s this town’s heroic final girl, their virgin angel. Monster… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a child & sibling recounted
  • Graphic murder & stalking
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Animal death & cruelty

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA – they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death. This is all about to change. Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis & allergic reacction
  • Murder & torture
  • Car accident
  • Stalking
  • Bullying
  • Animal death & cruelty

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Animal death

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies… especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism of children mentioned
  • Rape of a child
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Child pregnancy from rape
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Animal abuse

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Graphic animal death

The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto

Nobody knows Delilah like Logan does. Nobody. He makes sure of it by learning everything he can through her social media and watching her through a hidden camera he has trained on her house. Some might call him a stalker. Logan prefers to be called “romantic.” But after Logan sees Delilah killing her abusive stepfather, he realizes there’s still more about her to discover. His sweet, perfect Delilah isn’t so perfect after all. Delilah knows she should feel guilty, but all she feels is free. She’s so over the men in her life controlling her. Except Logan saw what she did, and he won’t let… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & sexism
  • Attempted suicide
  • Substance addiction
  • Drugging & overdose
  • Stalking

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch

A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles. Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors’ Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet. As Evie works to free her, the two are spotted—and within… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Gun & knife violence
  • Imprisonment & captivity

(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi

Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & sexual harassment
  • Infidelity discussed
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned (secondary character)
  • Body horror (on-page, detailed)