Religious Lit – Page 2 – Trigger Warning Database

Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros

Lithuania, 1943. A father drowns in the all-consuming grief of a daughter killed by the Nazis. He can’t bring Chaya back from the dead, but he can use kishuf — an ancient and profane magic — to create a golem in her image. A Nazi killer, to avenge her death. When Vera awakens, she can feel her violent purpose thrumming within her. But she can also feel glimpses of a human life lived, of stolen kisses amidst the tragedy, and of a grisly death. And when she meets Akiva, she recognizes the boy with soft lips that gave warm kisses. But these memories aren’t hers, and Vera doesn’t know if she gets—or deserves —to have a life beyond what… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Antisemitism
Body horror
Death of a parent
Murder & genocide

A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

Sixth-graders Sara, a Pakistani American, and Elizabeth, a white, Jewish girl meet when they take a South Asian cooking class taught by Sara’s mom. Sixth-graders Sara and Elizabeth could not be more different. Sara is at a new school that is huge and completely unlike the small Islamic school she used to attend. Elizabeth has her own problems: her British mum has been struggling with depression. The girls meet in an after-school South Asian cooking class, which Elizabeth takes because her mom has stopped cooking, and which Sara, who hates to cook, is… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Parent with depression

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania. But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Antisemitism
Hate crime
Rape & paedophilia recounted
Sexual assault
Nightmares
Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction and body horror
Hospitalisation & emesis
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a child
Death of a parent recounted
Murder
Gun violence
Drowning & consensual near-drowning
Fire & immolation

The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan

When new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she’s expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running it, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her? Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she’s only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help. Sofie Baumann, a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Unplanned pregnancy
Death of a fiancée

Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan

It’s hard enough being a kid without being teased for a funny sounding name or wearing a hijab. It’s even harder when you’re constantly fighting your sibling—and Zara and Zeeshan really can’t stand each other. During a family trip to Florida, when the bickering, shoving, and insults reach new heights of chaos, their parents sentence them to the worst possible fate—each other’s company! But when the twins find an ailing turtle, it presents a rare opportunity for teamwork—if the two can put their differences aside at last.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Islamophobic bullying

All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi

As the long-lost heir to the Jinn throne, Alizeh has finally found her people—and she might’ve found her crown. Cyrus, the mercurial ruler of Tulan, has offered her his kingdom in a twisted exchange: one that would begin with their marriage and end with his murder. Cyrus’s dark reputation precedes him; all the world knows of his blood-soaked past. Killing him should be easy—and accepting his offer might be the only way to fulfill her destiny and save her people. But the more Alizeh learns of him, the more she questions whether the terrible stories about him are true… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Self-harm & self-sacrifice
Blood & injury depiction including loss of an eye
Torture
Knife & sword violence

Prisoner B3087 by Alan Gratz

Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

Survive. At any cost. 10 concentration camps. 10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It’s something no one could imagine surviving. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face. As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prison, his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Antisemitism & Nazism
Death of a parent
Death of a friend
Imprisonment in concentration camps (theme)
War World Two & the Holocaust

Girl Out of Water by Laura Silverman

Girl Out of Water by Laura Silverman

Anise Sawyer plans to spend every minute of summer with her friends: surfing, chowing down on fish tacos drizzled with wasabi balsamic vinegar, and throwing bonfires that blaze until dawn. But when a serious car wreck leaves her aunt, a single mother of three, with two broken legs, it forces Anise to say goodbye for the first time to Santa Cruz, the waves, her friends, and even a kindling romance, and fly with her dad to Nebraska for the entire summer. Living in Nebraska isn’t easy. Anise spends her days caring for her three younger cousins in the childhood home of her runaway mom, a wild figure who’s been flickering…Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Absent parent
Alcohol consumption
Physical injuries
Car accident

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi

Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long-lost artifact rumoured to grant its possessor the power of God. Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all. As hidden… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Period-typical ableism, classism, misogyny, racism and antisemitism
Colonialism discussed
Sex work shaming
Attempted rape by coercion
Child abuse recounted
Self harm for magic
Suicide mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Stillbirth & infertility mentioned
Blood & injury depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a brother recounted
Death of a friend recounted
Murder
Poisoning
Psychological torture
Explosion
Vivisepulture (being buried alive) mentioned
Kidnapping
Animal death mentioned

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Mahmoud’s passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power. In Kabul, we meet Fereiba, a schoolteacher who puts her troubled childhood behind her when she finds love in an arranged marriage. But Fereiba’s comfortable life implodes when the Taliban rises to power and her family becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime. Forced to flee with her three child… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Arranged marriage
Displacement & refugee experiences