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.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

Hart is a marshal, tasked with patrolling the strange and magical wilds of Tanria. It’s an unforgiving job, and Hart’s got nothing but time to ponder his loneliness.

Mercy never has a moment to herself. She’s been single-handedly keeping Birdsall & Son Undertakers afloat in defiance of sullen jerks like Hart, who seems to have a gift for showing up right when her patience is thinnest… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical injuries including gunshot wounds
  • Emesis
  • Heart attack recounted*
  • Dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted
  • Death of a grandparent from a stroke
  • Attempted murder
  • Animal death recounted & discussed (dog)

*Context: Female protagonist’s father had a heart attack within the past year.

Teen Killers Club by Lily Sparks

Seventeen-year-old Signal Deere has raised eyebrows for years as an unhappy Goth misfit from the trailer park. When she’s convicted of her best friend Rose’s brutal murder, she’s designated a Class A–the most dangerous and manipulative criminal profile. To avoid prison, Signal signs on for a secret program for 18-and-under Class As and is whisked off to an abandoned sleep-away camp, where she and seven bunkmates will train as assassins. Yet even in the Teen Killers Club, Signal doesn’t fit in. She’s squeamish around blood. She’s kind and empathetic… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & grooming
  • Dead body
  • Decapitation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Death of a friend
  • Cult
  • Incarceration

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are Boneless Mercies – death-traders, hired to kill quickly, quietly and mercifully. It is a job for women, and women only. Men will not do this sad, dark work.
Frey has no family, no home, no fortune, and yet her blood sings a song of glory. So when she hears of a monster slaughtering men, women, and children in a northern jarldom, she decides this the Mercies’ one chance to change their fate… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Child abuse
  • Attempted forced child sex work mentioned
  • Suicide & assisted voluntary euthanasia, on-page
  • Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-flagellation, on-page
  • Dead bodies & body parts
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Serious physical injury & illness
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child, on-page
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of a girlfriend recounted
  • Death of a mentor recounted
  • Death of a parent from illness recounted
  • Death of a friend, on-page
  • Graphic murder & attempted murder (theme)
  • Knife, axe & attempted murder
  • Hanging, off-page
  • Poisoning
  • Graphic drowning
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal attack
  • Graphic animal death
  • Animal abuse

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Transmisia
  • Slavery
  • Rape threatened
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Loss of autonomy, by possession
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Torture
  • Poisoning
  • Fire
  • Genocide mentioned
  • Fantastical animal attack

Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto

Ready your blade. Defeat the undead. In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr—a ghost-fighting warrior—is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defense against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked. Determined to reclaim her family’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Pregnancy complications & death during childbirth
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Death of parents
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping

The Diamond Keeper by Jeannie Mobley

Eighteen-year-old Claudie Durand’s future is planned. She’ll take over the family inn, watch her much prettier younger sister, Mathilde, married off to the butcher’s son, and live out her days alone, without the hope of finding a love of her own. Her mother ran off to the cloister when she was young, and her gruff, abusive father has deemed her unmarriageable, a nuisance, and only good for hard labour. But outside their small village in Brittany, a revolution is brewing. When the Army of the Republic seizes their town, and Claudie finds herself at the center of the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence recounted
  • Depiction of dead bodies
  • Gun violence
  • Murder by stabbing & bayonet
  • Physical assault
  • Riots

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

Last summer, Alice Ogilvie’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. She’s not talking, so where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or it was, at least. But now, another one of Steve’s girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice’s ex–best friend. And it doesn’t look like Brooke will be coming back. Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Domestic abuse
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction including a dead body
  • Murder
  • Physical assault
  • Car accident
  • Bullying & cyberbullying

The Night in Question by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

The Night in Question by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams became the talk of Castle Cove when they cracked the biggest case of the fall: the death of Brooke Donovan. Together, the Agathas put Brooke’s killer away for good, and since then things around town have been almost back to normal. Quiet, even. But if Alice and Iris know anything, it’s that sometimes quiet is just the calm before the storm. The truth is, Brooke’s disappearance wasn’t the first mystery to rock Castle Cove, and it won’t be the last. So when their school dance at the infamous Levy Castle—the site of film starlet Mona Moody’s…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault discussed
  • Domestic violence
  • Drugging recounted
  • Blood & gore including a depiction of a dead body
  • Physical assault
  • Gun violence (flare gun)

Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman

Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman

The Danes—the band known as the “Darlings of Detroit”—are washed up and desperate for inspiration, eager to once again have a number one hit. That is, until an agent from the US Army approaches them. Will they travel to an African desert and track down the source of a mysterious and malevolent sound? Under the guidance of their frontman, Philip Tonka, the Danes embark on a harrowing journey through the scorching desert—a trip that takes Tonka into the heart of an ominous and twisted conspiracy. Meanwhile, in a nondescript Midwestern hospital, a nurse… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Graphic needles & syringes
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Graphic emesis
  • Nonconsensual medical treatment & procedures
  • Medical experimentation
  • Military service & deployment

Be Still My Heart by Emily McIntire & Sav Miller

Be Still My Heart by Emily McIntire & Sav R. Miller

Skelm Island, Maine has always been known for two things: lobsters and its broken lighthouse. But when corpses start showing up in the water, the isolated town becomes the face of a cryptic investigation. At the heart of which stands Lincoln Porter, a grumpy ex-SEAL whose lobstering business seems to attract more dead bodies than fish. When homicide expert Detective Sloane is called in to assist with the case, she begins digging up skeletons; ones that Lincoln would rather stay buried. Forced to work together, Sloane’s suspicious attitude and optimistic… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Naval service recounted (Navy SEAL)