Tag Archives: Death of a Child

And the World Crumbled by Aldrea Alien

And the World Crumbled by Aldrea Alien

No escape. No defence. One chance. Who’ll make it out alive? Everyone knows that Demarn’s spellster tower is the safest place to be for those with magic. The site is shielded by mountains to west, by allies to the north, and their kingdom’s army in the south whilst the whole kingdom stretches between them and the magic-reviling people patrolling the sea to the east. And yet, the enemy has breached the gates. They’ve issued no demands. Only death. Fleeing the tower and the ultimate demise is the one choice left. There is but one way out and the enemy holds more power… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Beheading & dismemberment
  • Graphic mass murder including infanticide
  • Vivisepulture (buried alive)

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

After a party, four teens are in a hit-and-run accident that results in a young boy’s death. Unable to deal with the consequences, they leave the body behind and make an anonymous phone call to the police, tipping them off. The group makes a secret pact to bury the memory of that night and never speak of it again, but when one of the girls receives a note that reads “I know what you did last summer,” their dark lie is unearthed. With twists and turns at every corner, they’ll have to fight to stay steps ahead of a killer determined to make them pay.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Gun violence

The Goddess of Nothing At All by Cat Rector

The Goddess of Nothing At All by Cat Rector

Perhaps you know the myths. Furious, benevolent Gods. A tree that binds nine realms. A hammer stronger than any weapon. And someday, the end of everything. Furious, benevolent Gods. A tree that binds nine realms. A hammer stronger than any weapon. And someday, the end of everything. Looking back, it’s easy to know what choices I might have made differently. At least it feels that way. I might have given up on my title. Told my father he was useless, king of Gods or no, and left Asgard. Made a life somewhere else. Maybe I would never have let Loki cross my path. Never… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Coming out scene
  • Psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse
  • Rape mentioned
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Death of an infant & teenager mentioned
  • Kidnapping
  • Torture
  • Battle scenes
  • Animal death

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

Lud-in-the-Mist – a prosperous country town situated where two rivers meet: the Dawl and the Dapple. The latter, which has its source in the land of Faerie, is a great trial to Lud, which had long rejected anything ‘other’, preferring to believe only in what is known, what is solid. Nathaniel Chanticleer is a somewhat dreamy, slightly melancholy man, not one for making waves, who is deliberately ignoring a vital part of his own past; a secret he refuses even to acknowledge. But with the disappearance of his own daughter, and a long-overdue desire to protect his young son, he realises that something is changing in Lud – and something must be done.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Body shaming
  • Infidelity
  • Addiction
  • Death of a child

Gutter Child by Jael Richardson

Gutter Child by Jael Richardson

Set in an imagined world in which the most vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society, Gutter Child uncovers a nation divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In this world, Elimina Dubois is one of only 100 babies taken from the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity as part of a social experiment led by the Mainland government. But when her Mainland mother dies, Elimina finds herself all alone, a teenager forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Indentured servitude
  • Rape
  • Forced sex work
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder of an infant
  • Police brutality

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six month… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Pregnancy & childbirth
  • Infertility & IVF treatment
  • Miscarriage
  • Police brutality including the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur – Minos’s greatest shame and Ariadne’s brother – demands blood every year When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods – drawing their attention…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Rape
  • Incest (mother-stepson)
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Bestiality
  • Animal cruelty
  • Animal death

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Paedophilia & sexual assault of a child
  • Body horror
  • Starvation
  • Cannibalism
  • Infanticide, on-page
  • Torture
  • Animal death (cat)

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors–until he forms a remarkable friendship with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Drug use, off-page
  • Death of a spouse from cancer
  • Death of a child from drowning

The Hangman by Louise Penny

The Hangman by Louise Penny

On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods near the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree. The man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa. The man might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible. Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail of clues, he opens a door into the past. And he learns the true reason why the man came to Three Pines. A quick and easy read for people on the go.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Car accident