The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war’s outcome. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Victim blaming
  • Slavery
  • Graphic rape
  • Paedophilia
  • Cheating
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a baby
  • Graphic murder
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal death
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A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay

A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay

College professor Paul Davis is a normal guy with a normal life. Until, driving along a deserted road late one night, he surprises a murderer disposing of a couple of bodies. That’s when Paul’s “normal” existence is turned upside down. After nearly losing his own life in that encounter, he finds himself battling PTSD, depression, and severe problems at work. His wife, Charlotte, desperate to cheer him up, brings home a vintage typewriter—complete with ink ribbons and heavy round keys—to encourage him to get started on that novel he’s always intended to write.

However, the typewriter itself is a problem. Paul swears it’s possessed and types by itself at night. But only Paul can hear the noise coming from downstairs; Charlotte doesn’t hear a thing. And she worries he’s going off the rails… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Drowning
  • Animal death
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Detention by Tristan Bancks

Sima and her family are pressed to the rough, cold ground among fifty others. They lie next to the tall fence designed to keep them in. The wires are cut one by one. When they make their escape, a guard raises the alarm. Shouting, smoke bombs, people tackled to the ground. In the chaos Sima loses her parents. Dad told her to run, so she does, hiding in a school and triggering a lockdown. A boy, Dan, finds her hiding in the toilet block. What should he do? Help her? Dob her in? She’s breaking the law, but is it right to lock kids up? And if he helps, should Sima trust him? Or run?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Refugee experiences in detention centres (theme)
  • Animal cruelty

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Longbourn by Jo Baker

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.

In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia & grooming
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Stillbirth
  • Blood depiction
  • Whipping & nonconsensual flogging
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Soulless by T Baggins

Soulless by T. Baggins

A Man of Science: Nicholas Robinson is a chemist decades ahead of his time. Crippled by a riding accident and embittered by his injuries, he shuns the world, focusing on his laboratory and experiments. But when the sale of his country estate, Grantley, leads to an encounter with a vampire, Nicholas realizes there is more in heaven and earth than he ever dreamed possible.

A Creature of Darkness: Although three hundred years old, Bancroft Ulwin is young by supernatural standards. Enslaved by his cruel, deformed maker, Ban is forbidden from relations with mortal men unless it ends… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Torture
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Candor by Pam Bachorz

Candor by Pam Bachorz

Oscar Banks lives in the pristine town of Candor. Son of the mayor, he is good-looking, smart and popular. And he knows something he’s not supposed to – he knows about the brainwashing Messages embedded in the music that plays all over the town.

But Oscar has found a way to burn counter-Messages that keep him real. Up to now, it’s all worked perfectly. There’s just one problem: Nia Silva, the newest Candor arrival. What will Oscar risk to keep the Nia he loves rather than watch her become a Candor automaton?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a sibling recounted
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A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been selected out of hundreds of other candidates to fly to France and help with the excavation of a vast, underground palace buried a hundred feet below the suburbs of Paris. Built in the 1780’s to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries. Or so she thought.

But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Classism
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Parental abandonment
  • Hallucinations & delusions mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Dead bodies
  • Human experimentation
  • Needles
  • Hospital
  • Decapitation
  • Emesis
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault
  • Torture & sensory deprivation
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Car accident
  • Plane crash mentioned
  • Bullying
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The Lore of Prometheus by Graham Austin-King

The Lore of Prometheus by Graham Austin-King

John Carver has three rules: Don’t drink in the daytime, don’t gamble when the luck has gone, and don’t talk to the dead people who come to visit.

It has been almost five years since the incident in Kabul. Since the magic stirred within him and the stories began. Fleeing the army, running from the whispers, the guilt, and the fear he was losing his mind, Carver fell into addiction, dragging himself through life one day at a time.

Desperation has pulled him back to Afghanistan, back to the heat, the dust, and the truth he worked so hard to avoid. But there are others, obsessed with power and forbidden magics… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Drugging
  • Hallucinations
  • Medical experimentation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Gun violence
  • Torture
  • Immolation
  • Kidnapping
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We Are All That’s Left by Carrie Arcos

We Are All That’s Left by Carrie Arcos

Zara and her mother, Nadja, have a strained relationship. Nadja just doesn’t understand Zara’s creative passion for, and self-expression through, photography. And Zara doesn’t know how to reach beyond their differences and connect to a closed-off mother who refuses to speak about her past in Bosnia. But when a bomb explodes as they’re shopping in their local farmers’ market in Rhode Island, Zara is left with PTSD–and her mother is left in a coma. Without the opportunity to get to know her mother, Zara is left with questions–not just about her mother, but about faith, religion, history, and her own path forward.

As Zara tries to sort through her confusion, she meets Joseph, whose grandmother is also in the hospital, and whose exploration of religion and philosophy offer comfort and insight into Zara’s own line of thinking.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted rape
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • SMoking
  • Blood & physical injury depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault
  • Bosnian War
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They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan… until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Victim blaming
  • Rape
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism mentioned
  • Cheating
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Anxiety
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Murder
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