Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

In Life of the Party, Olivia Gatwood she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language—at times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant—she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Cancer
  • Murder
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Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews

Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews

So far Meg Langslow’s summer is not going swimmingly. Down in her small Virginia hometown, she’s maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones–each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony, while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. Only help from the town’s drop-dead gorgeous hunk keeps Meg afloat in a sea of dotty relatives and outrageous neighbors.

And, in whirl of summer parties and picnics, Southern hospitality is strained to the limit by an offensive newcomer who hints at skeletons in the guests’ closets. But it seems this lady has offended one too many when she’s found dead… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut shaming
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
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The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racist slurs
  • Slavery
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Autopsy
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Flogging
  • Animal death
  • Animal experimentation
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This Vast Land by Stephen E Ambrose

This Vast Land by Stephen E. Ambrose

In a story muscled with truth and imagination, Stephen E. Ambrose recounts the epoch-making 1803 expedition of Lewis and Clark through the words of a young man. Finding foes and friends among Native Americans, surviving sickness and hunger, choosing between a woman and the life he left behind, George Shannon grows up as the corps forges a way west. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, Ambrose creates the fictional diary of nineteen-year-old George Shannon, who was in fact the youngest member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. He conjures the journey west with stunning clarity, calling on the bravery of Daniel Boone, the pragmatic courage of Sacajawea, the overarching, relentless vision of Meriwether Lewis.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Murder
  • Scalping
  • War themes
  • Animal death
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We Didn’t Ask for This by Adi Alsaid

We Didn’t Ask for This by Adi Alsaid

Central International School’s annual lock-in is legendary. Bonds are made. Contests are fought. Stories are forged that will be passed down from student to student for years to come.

This year’s lock-in begins normally enough. Then a group of students led by Marisa Cuevas stage an ecoprotest and chain themselves to the doors, vowing to keep everyone trapped inside until their list of demands is met.

Some students rally to their cause…but others are aggrieved to watch their own plans fall apart… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Physical injury, specifically a broken leg
  • Hostage situation
  • Bullying
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Jackdaw Summer by David Almond

Jackdaw Summer by David Almond

Also known as Raven Summer.

Daisy, Esther, and Susan’s last year at university is getting a bumpy start, with everything strange after Ed’s declaration of love followed by grievous injury, Daisy with nowhere to live, and McGraw and Susan at odds over their new flat!

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Burn scars
  • Death of a child recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • House fire recounted
  • Animal death
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Giant Days Vol 10 by John Allison and Max Sarin

Giant Days, Vol. 10 by John Allison and Max Sarin

Daisy, Esther, and Susan’s last year at university is getting a bumpy start, with everything strange after Ed’s declaration of love followed by grievous injury, Daisy with nowhere to live, and McGraw and Susan at odds over their new flat!

The final year of university is about to start for best mates Daisy, Esther, and Susan, and everything is going completely off the rails. From finding somewhere to live at the last minute, to broken bones, to the looming terror of the adult world, this semester is one you won’t want to miss.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Coming out themes
  • Forced outing
  • Bimisia
  • Alcohol consumption
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Giant Days Vol 11 by John Allison and Max Sarin

Giant Days, Vol. 11 by John Allison and Max Sarin

It’s Daisy, Esther and Susan’s third year at university, and with that comes new beaus, new jobs, and new adventures.

The third (and final!) year of university is finally here, and BFFs Daisy, Esther, and Susan are in for some surprising upsets in their first semester. Between Halloween run-ins with Daisy’s dreaded (dreadful) ex, part time gigs at a shady pop-up Christmas market, Esther dating a tech-bro and Susan attempting to be…romantic, there’s still plenty to learn and more than enough misadventure to squeeze in before it’s time to don caps and gowns!

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Forced outing to a relative recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
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The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett and Amelia Grace are forced to spend In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Graphic abortion
  • Autopsy
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a sister
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Car accident
  • Imprisonment
  • Earthquake
  • Death of a pet
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Indivisible by Daniel Aleman

Indivisible by Daniel Aleman

Mateo Garcia and his younger sister, Sophie, have been taught to fear one word for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade. Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they’re hard workers and good neighbors. When Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken by ICE, he realizes that his family’s worst nightmare has become a reality. With his parents’ fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he’s forced to question what it means to be an American.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Deportation (theme)
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