Body Horror – Page 22 – Trigger Warning Database

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

This Nebula Award-winning sequel to Parable of the Sower continues the story of Lauren Olamina in socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s. Convinced that her community should colonize the stars, Lauren and her followers make preparations. But the collapse of society and rise of fanatics result in Lauren’s followers being enslaved, and her daughter stolen from her. Now, Lauren must fight back to save the new world order.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Classism
Hate crimes
Victim blaming
Misogyny, sexism and gendered slurs
Racism and racial slurs
White supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
Child sexual assault and rape
Grooming behaviour and paedophilia
Rape and rape by coercion
Sex trafficking and sex slavery
Abuse, neglect and abandonment
Child abuse
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Verbal abuse
Family estrangement
Adult-minor relationships
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Suicide and attempted suicide
Infertility themes
Pregnancy
Non-consensual pregnancy
Teenage and child pregnancy
Amnesia
Blood and gore depiction
Body horror
Emesis
Physical injuries and wounds
Scars
Starvation and dehydration depiction
Dead bodies and body parts
Death of a child
Death of a friend
Death of a parent/guardians
Death of a sibling
Death of a partner/spouse
Disappearance of a loved one
Grief and loss depiction
Flogging and whippings
Gun violence
Hanging and lynching
Murder and attempted murder
Torture
Avalanche
Chemical gassing and warfare
Cults
Home invasion
Exile
Indentured servitude
Imprisonment, incarceration and captivity
Kidnapping
Persecution for witchcraft
Police brutality and violence
Religious persecution
Terrorism
War and military themes
Homelessness
Poverty themes

A Dark & Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth

A Dark & Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth

Choose your player: the “ironborn” half-fae outcast of her royal fae family; a tempestuous Fury, exiled to earth from the Immortal Realm hellbent on revenge; a dutiful fae prince, determined to earn his place on the throne; or the prince’s brooding guardian, burdened with a terrible secret.

For centuries, the Eight Courts of Folk have lived among us, concealed by magic and bound by law to do no harm to humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts—until a series of gruesome and ritualistic murders rocks the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world.

Four queer teens, each who hold a key piece of the truth behind these murders, must form a tenuous alliance in their effort to track down the mysterious killer behind these crimes. If they fail, they risk the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. If that’s not bad enough, there’s a war brewing between the Mortal and Immortal Realms, and one of these teens is destined to tip the scales. The only question is: which way?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Toxic relationship
Disownment
Addiction & drug use
Depression & PTSD
Suicide recounted (off-page) & suicidal ideation
Blood & gore depiction and minor body horror
Death of a child
Gun violence
Fire (arson)
Human trafficking
Stalking
Poverty themes

See the author’s note on the trigger and content warnings here.

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

Gene-edited human clans have scattered throughout the galaxy, adapting themselves to environments as severe as the desert and the sea. Atuale, the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, sparked a war by choosing her land-dwelling love and rejecting her place among her people. Now her husband and his clan are dying of an incurable plague, and Atuale’s sole hope for finding a cure is to travel off-planet. The one person she can turn to for help is the black-market mercenary known as the World Witch—and Atuale’s former lover. Time, politics, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted desires stand between Atuale and the hope for her adopted clan.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grey-area cheating
Childbirth, and miscarriage & stillbirth
Body horror
Emesis

The Icebound Land by John Flanagan

The Icebound Land by John Flanagan

Kidnapped after the fierce battle with Lord Morgarath, Will and Evanlyn are bound for Skandia as captives aboard a fearsome wolfship. Halt has sworn to rescue Will, and he will do anything to keep his promise–even defy his King. Expelled from the Rangers he has served so loyally, Halt is joined by Will’s friend Horace as he travels toward Skandia. On their way, they are challenged constantly by freelance knights–but Horace knows a thing or two about combat. Soon he begins to attract the attention of knights and warlords for miles around with his uncanny skill. Even so, will they be in time to rescue Will from a horrific life of slavery?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Alcohol consumption, addiction and non-consensual drugging
Body horror, physical injuries, physical illness and dead bodies/body parts
Verbal abuse
Hallucinations, delusions and suicide
Knife violence, murder and attempted murder
Banishment, exile and captivity
Blizzard
Whipping and flogging
Poverty themes
Animal death and hunting
War and military themes

Witches of Ash and Ruin by E. Latimer

Witches of Ash & Ruin by E. Latimer

Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her somatic OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch-plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader.

And then a witch turns up murdered at a local sacred site, along with the blood symbol of the Butcher of Manchester-an infamous serial killer whose trail has long gone cold. The killer’s motives are enmeshed in a complex web of witches and gods, and Dayna and Meiner soon find themselves at the center of it all. If they don’t stop the Butcher, one of them will be next.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & forced outing recounted (off-page)
Conversion therapy mentioned
Physical & emotional abuse mentioned
Rape mentioned
Self-harm
OCD
Panic attacks

Remina by Junji Ito

Remina by Junji Ito

Also known as Hellstar Remina.

An unknown planet emerges from inside a wormhole, and its discoverer, Dr. Oguro, christens the celestial body “Remina” after his own daughter. His finding is met with great fanfare, and Remina herself rises to fame. However, the planet picks up speed as it moves along in its curious orbit, eliminating planets and stars one after another until finally Earth itself faces extinction…

Is the girl Remina the true cause of the catastrophe? A masterwork of horror from Junji Ito, unfolding on a universal scale.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault
Blood & gore depiction, and body horror

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino’s novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.

The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako’s own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Domestic violence
Blood & gore depiction and body horror
Death of a husband
Murder

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night….

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Paedophilia
Blood and gore depiction
Dead bodies
Physical injuries
Scars
Emesis
Cancer mentioned
Death of a child
Murder
Fire
Animal cruelty
Bullying

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abandonment
Suicide, on-page
Suicidal ideation
Self-harm
Blood & gore depiction
Body horror (theme)
Human experimentation
Physical injuries, including loss of limb & eyeball trauma
Needles
Hospital
Emesis
Nonconensualmedical treatment
Starvation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a child
Death of a father
Death of a friend
Murder & attempted mass murder
Gun violence
Knife violence & stabbing
Hanging
Bombing mentioned
Kidnapping & captivity
Disappearance of a loved one
Chemical gassing
Animal death & dead bodies
Animal illness
Animal hunting
Death by an animal attack

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.

But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants a family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for. Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Emotional parental abuse & gaslighting
Nonconsensual pregnancy
Blood and gore depiction
Body horror
Dead body
Emesis mentioned
Death of an infant, off-page
Gun violence, off-page
Fire