Alias Space and Other Stories by Kelly Robson

Alias Space and Other Stories is the first fiction collection from Nebula Award-winning writer Kelly Robson, who vaulted onto the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stage in 2015, earning spots in multiple Year’s Best anthologies. This volume collects Robson’s best stories to date, along with exciting new work, and notes to accompany each piece.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Sex work
  • Graphic sexual assault, on-page
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Animal cruelty

Alchemised by SenLinYu

Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive. According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic misogyny
  • Rape & sexual assault (protagonist)*
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Infidelity
  • Forced marriage
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Amnesia & memory loss, including non-consensual memory alteration
  • Nightmares
  • Suicidal ideation & self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption (on-page) & mentions of smoking
  • Forced pregnancy & childbirth*
  • Miscarriage & abortion mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction, including eye trauma/ loss of eye, seizures, broken bones, emesis, traumatic brain injury, weight loss & gain due to malnutrition, disembowelment & amputation
  • Medical procedures, human experimentation. needles & surgery, including forced sterilization of a child
  • Cannibalism mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Attempted kidnapping
  • Arson & bombing
  • Imprisonment & captivity
  • Torture, including sensory deprivation and solitary confinement
  • War themes including war crimes & eugenics
  • Animal death & cruelty (experimentation)
  • Poverty

* Context: The female protagonist is raped by the male protagonist as part of a breeding program. The male protagonist cheats on his wife, who he was forced to marry and is also cheating on him, with the female protagonist.

Word of Mouse by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein

What makes Isaiah so unique? First, his fur is as blue as the sky—which until recently was something he’d never seen, but had read all about. That’s right: Isaiah can read and write. He can also talk to humans . . . if any of them are willing to listen! After a dramatic escape from a mysterious laboratory, Isaiah is separated from his “mischief” (which is the word for a mouse family) and has to survive in the dangerous outdoors, and hopefully find his missing family. But in a world of cruel cats, hungry owls, and terrified people, it’s… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Injections mentioned
  • Animal medical experimentation (theme)

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Death of a parent
  • Bullying
  • Animal death & cruelty

A Righteous Man by Tochi Onyebuchi

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Racism & classism
  • Hate crime
  • Rape
  • Miscarriage
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Mass shooting
  • Kidnapping
  • Colonisation
  • Animal death & cruelty

Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray

Magic doesn’t exist in the broken city of Lkossa anymore, especially for girls like sixteen-year-old Koffi. Indentured to the notorious Night Zoo, she cares for its fearsome and magical creatures to pay off her family’s debts and secure their eventual freedom. But the night her loved ones’ own safety is threatened by the Zoo’s cruel master, Koffi unleashes a power she doesn’t fully understand—and the consequences are dire. As the second son of a decorated hero, Ekon is all but destined to become a Son of the Six—an elite warrior—and uphold a family legacy. But on the night of his… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Indentured servitude
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Drugging & drug use (on-page)
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder mentioned
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Poisoning
  • Fire
  • Animal death & abuse

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, misogyny & ableism
  • Emesis
  • Self-injury (for blood) & mentions of self-starvation
  • Chronic illness (IBS & Crohn’s)
  • Needles discussed
  • Animal death & experimentation (including death of a cat)

The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall

Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Kidnapping & confinement
  • Physical injury & body horror
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal cruelty

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

Version 1.0.0

There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong…unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity (secondary character, on-page)
  • Physical & emotional child abuse recounted & discussed (off-page)
  • Parent with dementia (on-page)
  • Animal abuse & neglect mentioned

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods. While on a camping trip, five high-schoolers bound by an oath to always protect one another discover something in the middle of the forest: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend climbs up but does not come back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later it reappears, and the friends return to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Anxiety & depression
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Self-harm & suicidal ideation
  • Drug use
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Animal abuse