Tag Archives: Dead Bodies & Body Parts

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of dead bodies (human corpses) and body parts.

See also Blood & gore depiction, Decapitation & dismemberment, and Murder & attempted murder.

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Antisemitism
  • Paedophilia
  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Domestic violence & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Medical experimentation
  • Dead bodies
  • Dismemberment
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment
  • Concentration camps
  • Riots
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Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire—for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past… She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight. She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die for her. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen’s triumphant return.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction, including mentions of corpse mutilation, dead bodies, broken bones, beheading & branding
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture mentioned
  • Physical assault & fistfights mentioned
  • Poisoning mentioned
  • Hostage situation (being held at knifepoint)
  • Knife & bow and arrow violence
  • War themes & general fantasy violence (on-page)

Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma Carstairs must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions…

Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters’ help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Racism
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Rape by coercion mentioned
  • Psychological, emotional & physical child abuse recounted
  • Trauma (theme)
  • Nightmares
  • Schizophrenia
  • Hallucinations
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Physical injuries
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Home invasion
  • Exile
  • Drowning
  • Fire
  • Whipping
  • Cults
  • War themes including graphic battle scenes
  • Bullying
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Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

In the house of Helios, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Rape by coercion recounted & discussed
  • Incest mentioned
  • Emotional, verbal & physical abuse
  • Cheating
  • Arranged & forced marriage
  • Nightmares
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Graphic caesarean childbirth (on-page)
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood & physical injury depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sibling
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a father
  • Death of a husband
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Death from a fall
  • Death by drowning mentioned
  • Animal death (on-page)
  • Bestiality mentioned & recounted
  • Bullying
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City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith’s magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other.

As Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Homomisia & queermisia
  • Slut shaming
  • Hate crimes
  • Attempted rape & sexual assault
  • Incest
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Intimate partner violence recounted
  • Disownment
  • Hallucinations
  • Nightmares
  • Self-inflicted injuries
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Blood & gore depiction, including blood-drinking
  • Physical injuries
  • Dead bodies
  • Medical experimentation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a brother & sister
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a boyfriend
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Poisoning
  • Fire
  • Whipping
  • Disappearance of a loved one
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City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Hate crimes
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Intimate partner violence recounted
  • Disownment
  • Substance addiction mentioned
  • Nightmares
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Infertility themes
  • Blood & gore depiction, including blood-drinking
  • Physical injuries
  • Dead bodies
  • Medical experimentation
  • Comas
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion
  • War themes & battle scenes
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Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, surviving on the debris of its long-dead progenitors, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new, is Stefan Advani, rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction including body horror and dead bodies
  • Death of a mother & father recounted
  • Death of a friend, on-page & recounted
  • Death of a girlfriend in a stampede recounted
  • Murder, mass murder & attempted murder, on-page
  • Tank accident
  • Physical assault, on-page
  • Gun violence, on-page
  • Shipwreck
  • Drowning discussed
  • Torture
  • Whipping mentioned
  • Knife violence & stabbing, on-page
  • Riots, on-page
  • Police brutality & violence, on-page
  • Fire & immolation
  • Graphic penal labour & inhumane imprisonment (theme)
  • Homelessness recounted
  • Animal death
  • Animal attack

The Grown Up by Gillian Flynn

The Grown Up by Gillian Flynn

A young woman is making a living, faking it as a cut-price psychic working at Spiritual Palms (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). But then she meets Susan Burke. Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year old stepson Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor, built in 1893. Susan has become convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home and taking possession of the stepson. She has even found trickles of blood on the wall. The young woman doesn’t believe in exorcism or the supernatural, but she does see an opportunity to make a lot of money. However, when she enters the house for the first time and meets Miles, she begins to feel it too, as if the very house is watching her, waiting, biding its time….

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Death from childbirth mentioned
  • Graphic emesis
  • Dead bodies
  • Cancer
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
  • Animal abuse mentioned
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White Bird by RJ Palacio

White Bird by R.J. Palacio

In R. J. Palacio’s collection of stories Auggie & Me, which expands on characters in Wonder, readers were introduced to Julian’s grandmother, Grandmère. This is Grandmère’s story as a young Jewish girl hidden away by a family in Nazi-occupied France during World War II told in graphic novel form.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Death of a parent in a concentration camp
  • Gun violence
  • The Holocaust & World War Two (theme)
  • Animal attack
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City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

To save her mother’s life, Clary must travel to the City of Glass, the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters – never mind that entering the city without permission is against the Law, and breaking the Law could mean death. To make things worse, she learns that Jace does not want her there, and Simon has been thrown in prison by the Shadowhunters, who are deeply suspicious of a vampire who can withstand sunlight… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Hate crimes
  • Incest
  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Intimate partner violence recounted
  • Hallucinations
  • Graphic suicide & self-inflicted injuries recounted
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction, including blood-drinking
  • Physical injuries
  • Dead bodies
  • Medical experimentation
  • Needles & syringes
  • Forced starvation
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a brother
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Torture
  • Explosion
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
  • Imprisonment
  • Fire
  • Drowning
  • War themes & battle scenes
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