Tag Archives: Animal Cruelty, Abuse & Torture

A War of Wyverns by S.F. Williamson

Who is Vivien Featherswallow? Is she The Swallow, the most wanted rebel in all of Britannia? Is she a Brasstongue on the cusp of translating a new language? Or is she just Viv, the girl who lost the love of her life after playing spy? Though this war might have begun with bombs and teeth, it will be fought with tongues. And Viv will soon learn that everything she thought she knew—even about herself—might be a lie.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned & smoking (on-page)
  • Blood & injury depiction, including amputation
  • Imprisonment mentioned
  • War themes & battle scenes, including chemical gassing, knife & crossbow violence, and stabbing
  • Mythical animal attacks, injuries & cruelty, including torture and death of a dragon from a poisonous bullet

A Sea Monster Conundrum by Lisa Yee

Oof! When reports of ghosts arise around an abandoned lighthouse, Olive and her elite team of underdogs are immediately thrust into a brand new case. After all, ghosts don’t exist . . . right? Real or not, the ghosts draw quite a crowd at Olive’s beloved Reforming Arts School, or RASCH (not “rash”). Turns out everyone wants a glimpse of the ghosts, including . . . the nearby marine life?! Between RASCH’s ghosts and newfound tourism, rumors soon spiral out of control about a sea monster in the bay—snagging unwanted attention from a corrupt mogul. What is going on at RASCH? Does… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emesis (on-page)
  • Animal abuse (held in captivity, separating parents from their children)

Breaking Rosalind by Gigi Styx

I wove a deadly web, but it became my trap. Rosalind: I’m a cold-blooded killer, a femme fatale with a long list of victims. My latest target being Cesare Montesano. I must kill him and his brothers to protect my innocent young daughter. He catches me in the middle of the mission, but I’m not scared. I might be his prisoner yet I’m not without weapons. And I will use every trick in the book to disarm him and escape. Cesare: She tried to inject me with a poisonous syringe. Now, she’s my captive with a head full of secrets. Secrets that threaten my brother’s lives and rob our family’s power. She’s a betrayer, just like all the others, but I won’t… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Workplace sexual harassment
  • Child abuse & grooming recounted
  • Stockholm Syndrome & dubious consent (‘dubcon’)
  • Self-harm (cutting)
  • Drugging
  • Forced pregnancy & teen pregnancy recounted
  • Body modification, scars & branding, including tracker insertion
  • Genital mutilation (castration, stitching)
  • Dismemberment & evisceration
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Murder of a mother & father
  • Graphic torture, Russian roulette & sensory deprivation
  • Kidnapping
  • Blackmail
  • Animal cruelty recounted

Context : Depiction of BDSM & kink, including bondage, temperature play, pet play, breath play, candle play, gun play, hebephilia, knife play, and medical play

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Substance addiction & drug abuse
  • Dementia discussed
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Animal abuse & death (on-page)

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can’t get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive. They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose. Carl still has no pants. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it’s anything… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Violence against women & sex workers
  • Self-injury for blood
  • Alcohol consumption & drugging
  • Emesis
  • Murder & mass death
  • Explosions & fire
  • Animal abuse (lizard)

Braving the Storm by Elliott Rose

I’m not supposed to feel this way… I never wanted to disappear more than while around my family. Briar Lane, the girl only useful for one thing: my surname. A business handshake and pawn to be traded. My father’s chess piece shuffled between empires. That was my life back in L.A. but all it took was finding the dirty secret stuffed in a jacket pocket, and my entire world unraveled. So, I fled to the one place I knew they could never find me. Crimson Ridge. Arriving in this snowy, harsh world, I thought I’d be starting over on my own, but it turns out I couldn’t have been… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Statutory assault & rape, child prostitution & grooming mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Internalised victim-blaming by a rape survivor mentioned (secondary character)
  • Child abandonment & foster care system experiences mentioned (secondary character)
  • Verbal & emotional intimate partner abuse & gaslighting by ex-partner mentioned
  • Forced arranged marriage mentioned
  • Threats of disownment recounted
  • Infidelity by ex-partner discussed
  • Anxiety (protagonist) & nightmares recounted
  • Restrictive eating mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of alcoholism
  • Suicide of a pregnant side character by overdose mentioned
  • Infertility
  • Physical head injury (on-page) & mentions of past bull-riding injuries
  • Death of parents mentioned including death during childbirth (off-page)
  • Home invasion (off-page)
  • Blackmail & nonconsensual surveillance
  • Animal abuse mentioned

*Context : A romance between an adopted uncle and his estranged niece.

The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones

Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die. Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone’s got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You’re from this town. Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She’s just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she was rescued by a horse and bravely defeated the killer, alone, bra-less. Her story is already a legend. She’s this town’s heroic final girl, their virgin angel. Monster… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a child & sibling recounted
  • Graphic murder & stalking
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Animal death & cruelty

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA – they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death. This is all about to change. Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis & allergic reacction
  • Murder & torture
  • Car accident
  • Stalking
  • Bullying
  • Animal death & cruelty

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies… especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism of children mentioned
  • Rape of a child
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Child pregnancy from rape
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Animal abuse

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Infidelity
  • Death of a spouse from cancer
  • Drowning
  • Wildfire
  • Animal cruelty recounted