Child Abuse & Neglect – Page 103 – Trigger Warning Database

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In some few children the old bloods show, gifting rare talents that can be honed to deadly or mystic effect. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls.

A bloodstained child of nine falsely accused of murder, guilty of worse, Nona is stolen from the shadow of the noose. It takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist, but under Abbess Glass’s care there is much more to learn than the arts of death. Among her class Nona finds a new family—and new enemies.

Despite the security and isolation of the convent, Nona’s secret and violent past finds her out, drawing with it the tangled politics of a crumbling empire. Her arrival sparks old feuds to life, igniting vicious struggles within the church and even drawing the eye of the emperor himself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse
Parental abandonment
Death
Torture
Graphic animal abuse

Firestarter by Stephen King

Firestarter by Stephen King

The Department of Scientific Intelligence (aka “The Shop”) never anticipated that two participants in their research program would marry and have a child. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called “Lot Six” while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Fatmisia and body shaming
Transmisia
Misogyny
Medical abuse
Child abuse
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Suicide
Alcohol use
Nonconsensual drugging
Institutionalization
Death of a parent
Murder
Graphic fire scenes and arson
Kidnapping
Explosions
Nightmares
Mind control
War themes
Animal death

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic abuse (theme)
Child abuse
Alcoholism
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Cancer
Death of a parent
Murder
Vietnam War

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

When Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a ‘wrinkle in time’ for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as ‘It’. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a very special and exciting mixture of fantasy and science fiction, which all the way through is dominated by the funny and mysterious trio of guardian angels known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Physical child abuse
Disappearance of a parent

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Fantastical racism and racial slurs
Slavery
Child rape implied
Forced sexual relationships attempting pregnancy
Physical and emotional abuse of a child
Death of children
Death of a partner, on-page
Kidnapping
Captivity
Genocide recounted

What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra

Hayden tried to put the past behind her, and it worked. She’s getting ready for college, living in a Brooklyn apartment, and hanging out with her best friend and roommate Del. But now it’s all catching up with her: her mother’s mysterious disappearance a decade before, her father’s outlandish theories about a lost supernatural race, and Hayden’s own dark dreams of strange symbols and rituals in the Colorado woods where she grew up. As soon as Hayden arrives at her hometown, her friend Del in tow, it begins: Neighbors whisper secrets about Hayden’s mother… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism & ableist language
Child abuse mentioned
Sleep disorders
Graphic self-harm
Graphic consensual & nonconsensual medical treatment and needles
Burns
Physical assault
Hanging mentioned
Captivity mentioned
Bullying recounted

Ashes and Prophets by Aiden Bates and Jill Haven

Ashes and Prophets by Aiden Bates and Jill Haven

As our head of security, it’s my job to secure the weyr from all incursions – but somehow, this slip of a man got through all our defenses and into the very heart of our land.

He says he’s here to help. Sent by a god. A prophet to aid us in an impending apocalypse. And worse, he has some of our people already believing him.

I don’t trust him. His past is shrouded in mystery, and his magical abilities make this old dragon snarl in my scales. I plan to treat him like any other threat – by keeping him under lock and key. Now if only I could hold back the lust that overwhelms me every time I look at him…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sex work of a minor
Child abuse mentioned
Loss of vision
Strangulation
Homelessness

To Stand in the Light by Kayla Bashe

To Stand in the Light by Kayla Bashe

Answering a distress call in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, teenage half-demon Shadow finds a scene of carnage where their superheroine foster parents once lived. Only one thing holds them back from seeking death: the unexpected discovery of a small, scruffy girl. Bean, an acid-green-haired high school dropout, is feral and whimsical by turns. As they travel home, she slowly grows to trust Shadow, and wriggles into their closed-off heart.

Dangerous secrets and painful memories drive Shadow away from New York again and again, but their friendship with Bean only grows. When they return home, though, it’s to a grown-up Bean who finds herself falling for her former mentor — and tumbling headlong into much bigger trouble than anyone suspects…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Parental abandonment
Child abuse
Forced starvation
Self harm
Murder
Kidnapping
Homelessness

The Magic Half by Annie Barrows

The Magic Half by Annie Barrows

Miri is the only single child in the middle of a family with two sets of twins–older brothers and younger sisters. When the family moves to an old farmhouse Miri accidentally travels back in time to 1935 only to discover Molly, a girl in need of a real family to call her own.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Verbal & physical child abuse
Sibling abuse

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron

Arrah is a young woman from a long line of the most powerful witch doctors in the land. But she fails at magic, fails to call upon the ancestors and can’t even cast the simplest curse. Shame and disappointment dog her. When strange premonitions befall her family and children in the kingdom begin to disappear, Arrah undergoes the dangerous and scorned process of selling years of her life for magic. This borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal and a danger beyond what she could have imagined. Now Arrah must find a way to master magic, or at least buy it, in order to save herself and everything she holds dear.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Child abuse & neglect
Suicide
Graphic self-injury for blood magic (on-page)
Murder & mass murder of children
Poisoning
Kidnapping
Loss of autonomy (mind control)
Animal sacrifice mentioned (off-page)