Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Toil and Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe book cover

A young adult fiction anthology of 15 stories featuring contemporary, historical, and futuristic stories featuring witchy heroines who are diverse in race, class, sexuality, religion, geography, and era.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors. The collective strength of women working together—magically or mundanely–has long frightened society, to the point that women’s rights are challenged, legislated against, and denied all over the world. Toil & Trouble delves deep into the truly diverse mythology of witchcraft from many cultures and feminist points of view, to create modern and unique tales of witchery that have yet to be explored.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Abusive relationship
  • Substance addiction
  • Panic attacks
  • Drug use recounted
  • Alcohol consumption recounted
  • Childbirth
  • Dead bodies
  • Hospitalisation recounted
  • Death of an aunt
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a friend
  • Fire
  • Bullying
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The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd

The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd

The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd book cover

Willa Loveridge likes to be in control.

…of everything and everyone.

And when things start to spin out of her control, she only knows how to do one thing: panic.

So she failed her Foundations of Western Art class. Her ex-boyfriend sent her naked pictures to all of his friends. Her roommate hates her. Her mom and stepdad are having a baby. And her estranged father appeared after nineteen years of radio silence for the sole purpose of paying her college tuition. Seriously? He couldn’t even introduce himself first?

But at least this one, she can handle. She can’t change her grades, wipe her pictures from the internet, force her roommate to love her, or stop her mom from replacing her. But the father she’s never met dropping serious cash on her floundering education? A girl can handle that. Or so she thinks.

Goodreads The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Revenge pornography
  • Emotional abuse
  • Verbal abuse
  • Abusive relationship
  • Online harassment
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100 Hours by Rachel Vincent

100 Hours by Rachel Vincent

Maddie is beyond done with her cousin Genesis’s entitled and shallow entourage. Genesis is so over Miami’s predictable social scene with its velvet ropes, petty power plays, and backstabbing boyfriends. While Maddie craves family time for spring break, Genesis seeks novelty—like a last-minute getaway to an untouched beach in Colombia. And when Genesis wants something, it happens. But paradise has its price. Dragged from their tents under the cover of dark, Genesis, Maddie, and their friends are kidnapped and held for ransom deep inside the… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Statutory sexual assault
  • Abusive relationship
  • Substance addiction recovery
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction including emesis & needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent, brother & cousin
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Explosions
  • Psychological torture

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis book cover

Lynn knows every threat to her pond: drought, a snowless winter, coyotes, and, most importantly, people looking for a drink. She makes sure anyone who comes near the pond leaves thirsty, or doesn’t leave at all. Confident in her own abilities, Lynn has no use for the world beyond the nearby fields and forest. Having a life means dedicating it to survival, and the constant work of gathering wood and water. Having a pond requires the fortitude to protect it, something. Mother taught her well during their quiet hours on the rooftop, rifles in hand. But wisps of smoke on the horizon… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Rape & attempted rape recounted, and forced sex work (off-page)
  • Child abuse & intimate partner violence recounted
  • Suicide (on-page) & suicidal ideation
  • Pregnancy & childbirth (on-page), including stillbirth (on-page)
  • Blood & injury depiction, including dead bodies, graphic physical injuries & illness (cholera, seizures, fever), field surgery, and syringes & needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a brother
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Blackmail
  • Fire
  • Drought including death from starvation & dehydration
  • Death from exposure
  • Military deployment recounted
  • Animal death & death of a pet (on-page), including hunting & animal dead bodies
  • Animal cruelty

From Here to You by Jamie McGuire

From Here to You by Jamie McGuire

From Here to You by Jamie McGuire book cover

As Darby Dixon sits in a tiny Texas church bathroom on her wedding day holding a positive pregnancy test, she realizes that of all the bad decisions she’s made in her life, marrying her abusive fiancé would be the worst. She’s never been able to stand up for herself, but she’ll sure as hell stand up for her baby. With just the cash she has on hand, she runs to get a bus ticket to the farthest place she can afford. Between her sheer grit and pageant-queen smile, she lands a job as a front desk clerk at the Colorado Springs Hotel. It’s not a glamorous life, but she and her baby are all that matters… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Abusive relationship recounted
  • Pregnancy
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Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.

Unbeknownst to her parents, however, the program is actually an infamous teen meet-market nicknamed Loveboat, where the kids are more into clubbing than calligraphy and drinking snake-blood sake than touring sacred shrines.

Free for the first time, Ever sets out to break all her parents’ uber-strict rules—but how far can she go before she breaks her own heart?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Slut shaming
  • Revenge porn*
  • Abusive relationship
  • Cheating
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation & suicide recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Blood depiction

*Note: Release of nude photographs without consent.

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Killing Stalking by Koogi

Killing Stalking by Koogi

Yoon Bum, a scrawny, quiet boy, has a crush on one of the most popular and handsome guys in school, Sangwoo. One day, with Yoon Bum’s obsession toward Sangwoo reaching its peak, Yoon Bum decides to enter Sangwoo’s home. But what he sees inside is not the Sangwoo he had dreamed of.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Rape
  • Physical & psychological abuse
  • Abusive relationship
  • Borderline Personality Disorder
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Mutilation
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking
  • Knife violence
  • Torture
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The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde

The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde

As a rock star drummer in the hit band The Brightsiders, Emmy King’s life should be perfect. But there’s nothing the paparazzi love more than watching a celebrity crash and burn. When a night of partying lands Emmy in hospital and her girlfriend in jail, she’s branded the latest tabloid train wreck.

Luckily, Emmy has her friends and bandmates, including the super-swoonworthy Alfie, to help her pick up the pieces of her life. She knows hooking up with a band member is exactly the kind of trouble she should be avoiding, and yet Emmy and Alfie Just. Keep. Kissing.

Will the inevitable fallout turn her into a clickbait scandal (again)? Or will she find the strength to stand on her own?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia, homomisia & bimisia
  • Coming out themes
  • Body shaming
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Abusive relationship
  • Anxiety
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Minor blood depiction and physical injuries
  • Hospital
  • Emesis
  • (Tattoo) needles
  • Car accident
  • Online harassment
  • Stalking from paparazzi and invasions of privacy
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The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin book cover

What do a future ambassador, an overly ambitious Francophile, a hospital-volunteering Girl Scout, the new girl from Cleveland, the junior cheer captain, and the vice president of the debate club have in common? It sounds like the ridiculously long lead-up to an astoundingly absurd punchline, right? Except it’s not. Well, unless my life is the joke, which is kind of starting to look like a possibility given how beyond soap opera it’s been since I moved to Lancaster. But anyway, here’s your answer: we’ve all had the questionable privilege of going out with Lancaster High School’s de facto king. Otherwise known as my best friend. Otherwise known as the reason I’ve already helped steal a car, a jet ski, and one hundred spray-painted water bottles when it’s not even Christmas break yet. Otherwise known as Henry. Jersey number 8.

Meet Cleves. Girlfriend number four and the narrator of The Dead Queens Club, a young adult retelling of Henry VIII and his six wives. Cleves is the only girlfriend to come out of her relationship with Henry unscathed—but most breakups are messy, right? And sometimes tragic accidents happen…twice…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny and sexism
  • Ableism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Victim blaming
  • Body shaming
  • Sexual assault, recounted
  • Revenge pornography
  • Cheating
  • Gaslighting
  • Abusive relationship/s
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a mother, mentioned
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Building collapse
  • Fire
  • Stalking
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