Category Archives: Representation

Wrecked by Lauren Asher

Jax. Pills. Alcohol. Adrenaline. I’m addicted to destructive decisions that numb my pain. Until one night when I make a catastrophic mistake. To repair my broken reputation, my team hires Elena. An overpaid babysitter set on ruining my plans. She’s my damnation disguised as my salvation. And my newest addiction. Elena. I begged the universe to save me from my financial disaster. It answered my call with a Formula 1 team desperate for a PR miracle. One season. One job. One broody British racer. Except that Jax turns our hotel room into a battleground. To beat… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism mentioned
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Alcoholism & substance addiction
  • Anxiety & panic attacks and nightmares
  • Relative with Huntington’s Disease & Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Emesis
  • Murder

The Wrong Marquess by Vivienne Lorret

Elodie Parrish can feel spinsterhood breathing down her neck. That’s the trouble with waiting for the marquess next door her entire life. But Ellie knows if she gives him one last Season, he’ll finally propose. The only problem is, her path keeps crossing with the arrogant Lord Hullworth, who is convinced she has designs on him. Brandon, Marquess of Hullworth, never wanted to be “London’s Most Elusive Bachelor,” or have a horde of hopeful debutantes and their scheming mamas follow him around. His past has left him too jaded to consider marrying any of them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety, panic attacks & nightmares
  • Death of a parent

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her co-worker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but fakes it that she can. Plus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop paradise! But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Infidelity (ex-partner)
  • Disordered eating & body dysmorphia, including mentions of past dieting & calorie counting
  • Panic attack
  • Emesis
  • Death of parents in a car accident (off-page)
  • Loved one with terminal heart condition
  • Hurricane mentioned
  • Cyberbullying & harassment

The Good House by Tananarive Due

Angela hoped her grandmother’s famous “healing magic” could save her failing marriage while she and her family lived in the old house the summer of 2001. Instead, an unexpected tragedy ripped Angela’s family apart. Two years later, Angela is moving past her grief and is finally ready to revisit the rural house she loved so much as a child. But back in Sacajawea, she discovers she hasn’t been the only one to suffer a shocking loss. Since she left, there have been more senseless tragedies, and Angela wonders whether they are related somehow. Could the events be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Emesis

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Slavery & racial slurs
  • Infidelity
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Elder abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Self-mutilation
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic murder, including filicide by drugging & asphixiation
  • Stalking
  • Animal death (dog)

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due

Due’s second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense—all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due’s stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope. In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due’s trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Police brutality
  • Pandemic
  • Animal death

Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond

In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation. Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire trive render… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic slavery & racism (on-page)
  • Rape & sexual assault (on-page)

The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

It’s 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family’s past, including why she left Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers. From Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby’s fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Miscarriage & unexpected pregnancy
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & intergenerational trauma (theme)

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi

The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky. In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life. Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Drug use
  • Blood & injury depiction, including mentions of amputation, loss of vision & eye trauma
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion (landmines)
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes & nuclear disaster recounted

Rebel Sisters by Tochi Onyebuchi

It’s been five years since the Biafran War ended. Ify is now nineteen and living where she’s always dreamed–the Space Colonies. She is a respected, high-ranking medical officer and has dedicated her life to helping refugees like herself rebuild in the Colonies. Back in the still devastated Nigeria, Uzo, a young synth, is helping an aid worker, Xifeng, recover images and details of the war held in the technology of destroyed androids. Uzo, Xifeng, and the rest of their team are working to preserve memories of the many lives lost, despite the government’s best efforts to eradicate… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Torture