Animal Cruelty, Abuse & Torture – Page 31

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Fatmisia & body shaming
Animal experimentation mentioned

Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra

Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra

In 2003, sixteen-year-old Rebecca Winter disappeared. She’d been enjoying her teenage summer break but mysteriously ominous things began to happen—blood in the bed, periods of blackouts, a feeling of being watched—though Bec remained oblivious of what was to come.

Eleven years later she is replaced. A young woman, desperate after being arrested, claims to be the decade-missing Bec. But Bec’s welcoming family friends are not quite as they seem. As the imposter dodges the detective investigating her case, she begins to delve into the life of the real Bec Winter—and soon realizes that whoever took Bec is still at large, and that she is in imminent danger.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Self harm
Alcohol abuse
Blood depiction
Fire & bushfire
Disappearance of a loved one
Animal death
Animal cruelty

Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Growing up in the Cinzio Traveling Players circus, Genevieve Flannery is accustomed to a life most teenagers could never imagine. Her mother Delia’s ghostly hallucinations never seemed all that strange . . . until the evening Geni and her mother are performing an aerial routine they’ve done hundreds of times, and Delia falls to her death.

That night, a dark curtain in Geni’s life opens. Everything has changed. As they reel from the tragedy, the Cinzio Traveling Players are also grappling with the circus’s new owner: a generous, mysterious man whose connection to the circus—Geni suspects—has a dark history. And suddenly, Geni is stumbling into a new reality of her own, her life interrupted daily by the terrors only Delia used to see.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language,
Fatmisia & body shaming
Domestic violence mentioned
Graphic physical injuries
Death of a mother
Murder
Torture mentioned
Car accident
Imprisonment
Kidnapping
Animal cruelty

Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater

Sixteen-year-old Deirdre Monaghan is a painfully shy but prodigiously gifted musician. She’s about to find out she’s also a cloverhand―one who can see faeries. Deirdre finds herself infatuated with a mysterious boy who enters her ordinary suburban life, seemingly out of thin air. Trouble is, the enigmatic and gorgeous Luke turns out to be a gallowglass―a soulless faerie assassin. An equally hunky―and equally dangerous―dark faerie soldier named Aodhan is also stalking Deirdre.

Sworn enemies, Luke and Aodhan each have a deadly assignment from the Faerie Queen. Namely, kill Deirdre before her music captures the attention of the Fae and threatens the Queen’s sovereignty. Caught in the crossfire with Deirdre is James, her wisecracking but loyal best friend. Deirdre had been wishing her life weren’t so dull, but getting trapped in the middle of a centuries-old faerie war isn’t exactly what she had in mind . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist & fatmisic language
Graphic animal torture

Gemina by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Gemina by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.

Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.

When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Graphic blood and gore depiction
Death of a parent
Death of a friend
Murder
Animal cruelty

The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud

The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud

After leaving Lockwood & Co., Lucy is a freelance operative, hiring herself out to agencies that value her ever-improving skills. One day she is pleasantly surprised by a visit from Lockwood, who tells her he needs a good Listener for a tough assignment.

Penelope Fittes, the leader of the giant Fittes Agency wants them–and only them–to locate and remove the Source for the legendary Brixton Cannibal. They succeed in their very dangerous task, but tensions remain high between Lucy and the other agents. Even the skull in the jar talks to her like a jilted lover.

What will it take to reunite the team? Black marketeers, an informant ghost, a Spirit Cape that transports the wearer, and mysteries involving Steve Rotwell and Penelope Fittes just may do the trick.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Persecution for witchcraft mentioned
Fatmisia & body shaming
Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
Physical injuries
Dismemberment
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a friend
Death of a mother, father & sister recounted
Murder & attempted murder
Knife violence & stabbing
Gun violence
Explosions
Animal cruelty (minor)

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.

Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Human trafficking
Physical parental abuse
Child sexual abuse mentioned
Amnesia (memory loss)
Blood & gore depiction
Body horror
Medical experimentation
Death of a child
Death of a brother
Death of a mother & father
Death of a wife
Murder & attempted murder
Physical assault
Imprisonment
Drowning
Earthquakes
Disappearance of a loved one
Child homelessness & poverty recounted
Rebellion themes & regicide
Animal attack
Animal injury & illness
Animal abuse

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures. Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals with a bully set on destroying him.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language (r slur)
Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Victim blaming
Child abuse
Manic depression
Suicide mentioned
Childbirth
Paralysis
Cancer
Epilepsy & seizures
Hospital
Life-threatening weight loss
Needles
Asphyxia (choking)
Poisoning mentioned
Drowning
Animal death & abuse

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn’t care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Misogyny
Rape mentioned
Body horror
Medical experimentation
Murder
Torture
Animal abuse

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871, Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle and her habit of speaking her mind plainly.

But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn’t, her older sister Agatha flees, running off with a pack of “pigeoners” trailing the passenger pigeon migration. And when the sheriff returns to town with an unidentifiable body—wearing Agatha’s blue-green ball gown—everyone assumes the worst. Except Georgie. Refusing to believe the facts that are laid down (and coffined) before her, Georgie sets out on a journey to find her sister. She will track every last clue and shred of evidence to bring Agatha home. Yet even with resolute determination and her trusty Springfield single-shot, Georgie is not prepared for what she faces on the western frontier.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a sibling
Physical assault
Animal cruelty