Insomnia by Stephen King

Insomnia by Stephen King

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovers this when she is nine years old. Lost in the woods.

Trisha has only veered a little way off the path. But in her panic to get back to her family, she takes a turning that leads into the tangled undergrowth, deeper into the woods.

At first it’s just the bugs, midges and mosquitoes. Then comes the hunger. For comfort she tunes her Walkman into broadcasts of the Red Sox baseball games and the performances of her hero Tom Gordon.

As darkness begins to fall and Trisha struggles for survival and a way out, she realizes that she is not alone. There’s something else in the woods – watching. Waiting…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Sleep maintenance insomnia (theme)
  • Cancer
  • Abortion
  • Fire
  • Animal abuse
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Different Seasons by Stephen King

Different Seasons by Stephen King

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption–the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.

Apt Pupil–a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism.

The Body–four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.

The Breathing Method–a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape, including prison rape
  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Dismemberment
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Animal abuse
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Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Will Graham stands in a silent, empty house communing with a killer. An FBI instructor with a gift for hunting madmen, Graham knows what his murderer looks like, how he thinks, and what he did to his victims after they died. Now Graham must try to catch him. But to do it, he must feel the heat of a killer’s brain, draw on the macabre advice of a dangerous mental patient, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and follow a trail of microscopic clues to the place where another family has already been chosen to die–and where an innocent woman has found the Dragon first. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Child abuse
  • Cannibalism
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Home invasion
  • Animal cruelty
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Pestilence by Laura Thalassa

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa

When Pestilence comes for Sara Burn’s town, one thing is certain: everyone she knows and loves is marked for death. Unless, of course, the angelic-looking horseman is stopped, which is exactly what Sara has in mind when she shoots the unholy beast off his steed. Too bad no one told her Pestilence can’t be killed.

Now the horseman, very much alive and very pissed off, has taken her prisoner, and he’s eager to make her suffer. Only, the longer she’s with him, the more uncertain she is about his true feelings towards her … and hers towards him. And now, well, Sara might still be able to save the world, but in order to do so, she’ll have to sacrifice her heart in the process.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape mentioned
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Animal abuse & cruelty
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Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In some few children the old bloods show, gifting rare talents that can be honed to deadly or mystic effect. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls.

A bloodstained child of nine falsely accused of murder, guilty of worse, Nona is stolen from the shadow of the noose. It takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist, but under Abbess Glass’s care there is much more to learn than the arts of death. Among her class Nona finds a new family—and new enemies.

Despite the security and isolation of the convent, Nona’s secret and violent past finds her out, drawing with it the tangled politics of a crumbling empire. Her arrival sparks old feuds to life, igniting vicious struggles within the church and even drawing the eye of the emperor himself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Death
  • Torture
  • Graphic animal abuse
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Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Body horror
  • Animal abuse
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Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Animal abuse
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Charlotte Says by Alex Bell

Charlotte Says by Alex Bell

Following the death of her mother in a terrible fire, Jemima flees to the remote Isle of Skye, to take up a job at a school for girls. There she finds herself tormented by the mystery of what really happened that night.

Then Jemima receives a box of Frozen Charlotte dolls from a mystery sender and she begins to remember – a séance with the dolls, a violent argument with her step-father and the inferno that destroyed their home. And when it seems that the dolls are triggering a series of accidents at the school, Jemima realizes she must stop the demonic spirits possessing the dolls – whatever it takes.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical abuse
  • Animal abuse
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Runt by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Runt by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Elizabeth Moon grew up around dogs. Her mom runs a boarding kennel out of their home, so she’s seen how dogs behave to determine pack order. Her experience in middle school is uncomfortably similar.

Maggie hates how Elizabeth acts so much better than everyone else. Besides, she’s always covered in dog hair. And she smells. So Maggie creates a fake profile on a popular social networking site to teach Elizabeth a lesson.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Animal abuse
  • Animal death
  • Animal injury
  • Bullying
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Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

September 1973: The beginning of Karl Shoemaker’s senior year in stifling Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl’s been part of “the Madman Underground”- kids forced to attend group therapy during school. Karl has decided that he is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good. He is going to act-and be-Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. Karl has two after-school jobs, one dead father, one seriously unhinged drunk mother . . . and a huge attitude. Welcome to a gritty, uncensored rollercoaster ride, narrated by the singular Karl Shoemaker.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Hate crimes
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Underage sex work
  • Physical & verbal abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Medical treatment
  • Needles
  • Physical assault
  • Animal death & death of a pet
  • Animal abuse
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