Animal Cruelty, Abuse & Torture – Page 28

This Fallen Prey by Kelley Armstrong

This Fallen Prey by Kelley Armstrong

When Casey first arrived at the off-the-grid town, an isolated community built as a haven for people running from their pasts, she had no idea what to expect, with no cell phones, no internet, no mail, and no way of getting in or out without the town councils approval. She certainly didn’t expect to be the homicide detective on two separate cases or to begin a romantic relationship with her boss. But the very last thing she expected was for the council to drop a dangerous criminal into their midst without a plan to keep him imprisoned and to keep others safe. Of course, Oliver Brady claims he’s being set up. But the longer Brady stays in town, the more things start to go wrong. When evidence comes to light that someone inside Rockton might be working as his accomplice, helping him to escape, Casey races to figure out who exactly Brady is and what crimes he’s truly responsible for committing.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape recounted
Murder
Gun violence
Animal cruelty

Missing by Kelley Armstrong

Missing by Kelley Armstrong

Everyone knows they left. No one knows they’re… missing.

Reeve’s End is the kind of town every kid can’t wait to escape. Each summer, a dozen kids leave, and at least a quarter never come back. I don’t blame them – I’ll do the same in another year. We thought it was just something that happened in town like ours.

We were wrong.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic abuse & violence
Animal cruelty

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine, a witch, and Laurence Armstead, a mad scientist, parted ways under mysterious circumstances during middle school. But as adults they both wind up in near-future San Francisco, where Laurence is an engineering genius and Patricia works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s ever growing ailments. But something is determined to bring them back together—to either save the world, or end it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abuse
Suicide
Death of a parent
Hazing
Animal torture

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.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racist slurs
Slavery
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Autopsy
Murder
Physical assault
Flogging
Animal death
Animal experimentation

Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera

Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera

Emil and Brighton Rey defied the odds. They beat the Blood Casters and escaped with their lives–or so they thought. When Brighton drank the Reaper’s Blood, he believed it would make him invincible, but instead the potion is killing him. In Emil’s race to find an antidote that will not only save his brother but also rid him of his own unwanted phoenix powers, he will have to dig deep into the very past lives he’s trying to outrun. Though he needs the help of the Spell Walkers now more than ever, their ranks are fracturing, with Maribelle’s thirst for revenge sending her down a dangerous… Read more

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Anxiety & anxiety attacks
Depression
Blood & gore depiction
Death of a parent mentioned
Physical assault
Murder
Torture mentioned
Hostage situation
Animal cruelty & abuse

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Misogyny
Statutory rape mentioned
Sexual assault mentioned
Suicide
Childbirth
Scalping & skinning, off-page
Dismemberment mentioned
Cannibalism mentioned
Starvation
Death of a friend
Poisoning
Torture
Lynching
Animal death & abuse

The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Attempted rape
Incest
Domestic abuse
Imprisonment
Animal cruelty

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Twenty years ago Claire Scott’s eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went – no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart. Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one. Claire is convinced Julia’s disappearance is linked. But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Rape & paedophilia
Suicide mentioned
Drug abuse
Blood & gore depiction
Death of a sister & spouse
Murder
Torture
Gun violence
House fire
Kidnapping
Disappearance of a sibling
Animal abuse mentioned

The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan

The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan

It’s been almost a year since Sila’s mother traveled halfway around the world to Turkey, hoping to secure the immigration paperwork that would allow her to return to her family in the United States.

The long separation is almost impossible for Sila to withstand. But things change when Sila accompanies her father outside their Oregon town to fix a truck. There, behind an enormous stone wall, she meets a grandfatherly man who only months before won the state lottery. Their new alliance leads to the rescue of a circus elephant named Veda, and then to a friendship with an unusual boy named Mateo, proving that comfort and hope come in the most unlikely of places.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Terminal cancer
Death of a wife recounted
Graphic animal abuse, neglect & cruelty, including the use of electric prods

Home After Dark by David Small

Home After Dark by David Small

Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to sun-splashed California in search of a dream. Suddenly forced to fend for himself, Russell struggles to survive in Marshfield, a dilapidated town haunted by a sadistic animal killer and a ring of malicious boys who bully Russell. Rescued from his booze-swilling father by Wen and Jian Mah, a Chinese immigrant couple who long for a child, Russell betrays their generosity by running away with their restaurant’s proceeds.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Queermisia
Suicide
Alcohol consumption
Smoking
Physical assault
Animal death
Animal abuse
Bullying