Death of a Child – Trigger Warning Database

The Family Experiment by John Marrs

The world’s population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, the breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families, let alone raise them. But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality TV show called The Substitute. It will follow ten… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infidelity mentioned
Gambling addiction mentioned
Drug use mentioned
Cancer mentioned
Death of a child

The Fallen by Charlie Higson

First the sickness rotted the adults’ minds. Then their bodies. Now they stalk the streets, hunting human flesh. The Holloway crew are survivors. They’ve fought their way across London and made it to the Natural History Museum alive – just. But the fight will never end while the Enemy lives, unless there’s another way…The kids at the museum are looking for a cure. All they need are medical supplies. To get them means a journey down unknown roads. Roads where not only crazed, hungry sickos hide in the shadows. Suddenly it’s not so clear who – or what – they’re fighting.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Blood & gore depiction including body horror and cannibalism
Death of a child
Animal death

The Fae Keeper by H.E. Edgmon

Two weeks after the door to Faery closed once more, Asalin is still in turmoil. Emyr and Wyatt are hunting Derek and Clarke themselves after having abolished the corrupt Guard, and are trying to convince the other kingdoms to follow their lead. But when they uncover the hidden truth about the witches’ real place in fae society, it becomes clear the problems run much deeper than anyone knew. And this may be more than the two of them can fix. As Wyatt struggles to learn control of his magic and balance his own needs with the needs of a kingdom, he must finally decide on the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Transphobia & dysphoria
Rape by coercion (off-page)
Parental abandonment
Panic attacks (on-page)
Dissociation
Blood & gore depiction and cannibalism
Murder
Graphic infanticide
Car accident
Fire
Animal death

Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan

Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she’s shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn’t sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan—a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand. Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Death of a son in a car accident

The Safe Place by Anna Downes

Emily Proudman has been offered the chance of a lifetime – leave her messy London life, move to a beautiful estate in France and help her boss’s wife take care of their daughter. It seems like the perfect opportunity to start again. But once there, Emily soon starts to suspect that her charismatic new employers aren’t telling her the whole truth. That there are even dangerous secrets hidden beneath the glamorous facade. Why have the family been moved to this isolated house so far from home? Why does her boss’s daughter refuse to speak or be touched?… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Foster care experiences mentioned
Child abuse, including one slap scene, faking a child’s chronic illness, and forcing them to live in isolation (etc.)
Discussions of childhood trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (c-PTSD)
Parent with dementia
Panic attacks
Self-harm (on-page)
Suicide by jumping (on-page)
Alcohol consumption & abuse and implied drug abuse
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a daughter recounted
Minor blood & injury depiction and emesis
Attempted murder by gun violence
Kidnapping and captivity of a child
Stalking
Financial difficulties discussed

Zeus: King of the Gods by George O’Connor

Here’s Where It All Starts: the beginning of everything – the world, the gods, and even humanity. Mighty Kronos, the most terrifying of all the Titans, reigns as the unchallenged tyrant of the cosmos…until his son, the god Zeus, stands up and takes on his own father in a battle intense enough to shatter the universe! Who will emerge triumphant?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Infanticide & patricide
Imprisonment
War themes & battle scenes

Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson

Kaylani is a born-and-bred Brooklyn girl. She expects to feel like a fish out of water spending the hot and sticky summer on Martha’s Vineyard with family friends, the Watsons. But her mother insists, especially since Kaylani still spends long hours on the phone with her imprisoned father. The Watsons live in the town of Oak Bluffs, a place with a rich Black history that fascinates Kaylani. Though the Watsons’ daughter, London, is snobby and unfriendly, Kaylani ends up connecting with some other kids in the town, who show… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Classism
Emesis
Blood depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a child
Murder
Imprisonment
Bullying

Alias Space and Other Stories by Kelly Robson

Alias Space and Other Stories is the first fiction collection from Nebula Award-winning writer Kelly Robson, who vaulted onto the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stage in 2015, earning spots in multiple Year’s Best anthologies. This volume collects Robson’s best stories to date, along with exciting new work, and notes to accompany each piece.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Misogyny
Sex work
Graphic sexual assault, on-page
Suicide
Death of a child
Murder
Animal cruelty

99 Red Balloons by Elisabeth Carpenter

When eight-year-old Grace goes missing from a sweetshop on the way home from school, her mother Emma is plunged into a nightmare. Her family rallies around, but as the police hunt begins, cracks begin to emerge. What are the secret emails sent between Emma’s husband and her sister? Why does her mother take so long to join the search? And is Emma really as innocent as she seems? Meanwhile, ageing widow Maggie Taylor sees Grace’s picture in the newspaper. It’s a photograph that jolts her from the pain of her existence into a spiralling obsession with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Emotional child neglect
Self-harm & suicidal ideation
Drugging
Cannibalism mentioned
Hospitalisation mentioned
Death of a child (off-page)
Gun violence
Explosion (bomb)
Animal death (pet)

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous actor – enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz. Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Homophobia
Drugging
Suicidal ideation
Brain injury
Death of a child
Murder by strangulation
Car accident