Tag Archives: Body Horror

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The rule is simple: don’t bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest*
  • Necrophilia mentioned
  • Delusions, including a diagnosis of Capgras Syndrome
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm including cutting and self-inflicted wounds
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction (theme)
  • Body horror
  • Medical procedures including autopsies
  • Dismemberment
  • Hospital
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother and father, off-page
  • Death of a child
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Strangulation
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic knife violence & stabbing
  • Graphic physical assault
  • Captivity
  • Fire
  • Death of a pet dog
  • Animal death & dead bodies including butchery

Context: a) there is a scene where the protagonist is interrupted having sex with her boyfriend by her doppelgänger and they let her join in and b) it is mentioned that the protagonist’s father caught her touching her doppelgänger’s genitals when she was a kid.

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

When Shuos Jedao wakes up for the first time, several things go wrong. His few memories tell him that he’s a seventeen-year-old cadet–but his body belongs to a man decades older.  Hexarch Nirai Kujen orders Jedao to reconquer the fractured hexarchate on his behalf even though Jedao has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general.  Surely a knack for video games doesn’t qualify you to take charge of an army? Soon Jedao learns the situation is even worse.  The Kel soldiers under his command may be compelled to obey him, but they hate him thanks to a mass… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Dubious consent scenarios
  • Memory loss
  • Suicide
  • Body horror
  • Death of a child
  • Torture
  • Loss of autonomy (mind control)
  • War themes

Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee

The essential short story collection set in the universe of Ninefox Gambit. An ex-Kel art thief has to save the world from a galaxy-shattering prototype weapon. A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent. A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade. From the incredible imagination of Hugo- and Arthur C. Clarke-nominated author Yoon Ha Lee comes a collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Ninefox Gambit. Showcasing Lee’s extraordinary imagination, this collection takes you to the very beginnings of the hexarchate’s history and reveals new never-before-seen stories. 

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Body horror

Transmuted by Eve Harms

Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams… and her nightmares. Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can’t wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she’s overjoyed—until she has to give up all her money to save her dying father. Crushed by gender dysphoria and the pressure of disappointing her fans who paid for a new face, she answers a sketchy ad seeking transgender women for a free, experimental feminization treatment. The grotesquely flawless Dr. Skurm has gruesome methods, but he… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Internalised fat-shaming
  • Transmisia including deadnaming
  • Medical treatment
  • Body horror & mutilation
  • Torture

After Atlas by Emma Newman

Govcorp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos’s entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas’s departure, it’s got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room—and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation. To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Eating disorders
  • Body horror

Mister Magic by Kiersten White

Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent their lives searching for the happiness they felt while they were on it. The friendship. The feeling of belonging. And the protection of Mister Magic. But with no surviving video of the show, no evidence of who directed or produced it, and no records of who—or what—the beloved host actually was, memories… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Child abuse
  • Conversion therapy mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Body horror
  • Death of a child
  • Kidnapping

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing. After a failed attempted tgo escape an arranged marriage, SIlas is diagnosed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia & transmisia
  • Misgendering & deadnaming
  • Misogyny & sexism
  • Conversion therapy
  • Sexual assault of a child, on-page
  • Dissociation
  • Forced institutionalisation
  • Involuntary pregnancy
  • Graphic self-abortion
  • Miscarriage discussed
  • Graphic body horror & eye trauma
  • Graphic medical procedures & experimentation
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a mother and father
  • Physical assault

Soul of a Witch by Harley Laroux

Everly: I am the servant of a merciless God. I am the daughter of Its preacher. All my life, my power has been controlled by others. They raised me to be meek and stifled my magic. But no more. A brutal murder led me to discover a mysterious house full of magic – and the ancient, powerful demon within. He says my power can change the world, that I can kill the evil creature I once worshipped. But at what cost? Callum: For two thousand years, I’ve been alone. Slaughtering fallen Gods as I searched for the witch that haunted my dreams, begging for my help. Now that I’ve found.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abuse
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Pregnancy & miscarriage discussed
  • Death of a parent from suicide mentioned
  • Blood & knife play
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Torture

Bite Me by Robyn Bachar

When an out-of-control spell triggers the zombie apocalypse, Lizzy Addams is left in the ruins of Chicago with only the unhinged commentary—and endless erotic appetites—of her inner demon for company. Her blood supply dwindling, Lizzy must find survivors to feed from, or die trying. Officer Angela Kinney was on duty when hungry corpses overwhelmed the city. Angie’s group of survivors look to her for leadership, but nothing prepared her for a beautiful monster who offers safety in exchange for blood. Sean MacMillan never expected to see Lizzy again after she rejected his attempts to lure her back to the vampire… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slur
  • Rape recounted & off-page
  • Child sexual abuse by a stepfather resulting in pregnancy mentioned (secondary character)
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Emotional sibling abuse
  • Blood & gore depiction including body horror and blood-drinking
  • Physical injury & scar
  • Death of a mother from childbirth recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Stalking

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.
On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three ‘saints’ who control them… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Cannibalism
  • Dismemberment
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Animal death