Tag Archives: Death of a Child

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counsellor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Statutory rape mentioned
  • Domestic violence
  • Death of children
  • Murder recounted
  • Drowning

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out. The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty: the debut writer (mc!), the forensic science writer, the blockbuster writer, the legal thriller, the literary writer, the psychological suspense writer. But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quick… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse, implied
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Death of children and spouse in a fatal car accident

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started. Everyone in my family has killed someone. My brother. My stepsister. My wife. My father. My mother. My sister… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use (on-page)
  • Graphic physical injury & emesis
  • Death of a child recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Torture (off-page)
  • Kidnapping
  • Incarceration recounted (secondary character)

Where Butterflies Wander by Suzanne Redfearn

After a tragic accident claims the life of one of her children, Marie Egide is desperate to carve out a fresh start for her family. With her husband and their three surviving children, Marie travels to New Hampshire, where she plans to sell a family estate and then, just maybe, they’ll be able to heal from their grief. Marie’s plans are thwarted when she realizes a war veteran known by locals as “the river witch” is living in a cabin on the property, which she claims was a gift from Marie’s grandfather. If Davina refuses to move on, Marie won’t be able to either. The two women… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a daughter
  • Injury & scarring obtained during military deployment in Afghanistan
  • Animal injury (dog)

Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

In a country called ‘Town’, Su is found dead in an abandoned car. The suspected killer is presumed to come from the Saha Estates. Town is a privatised country, controlled by a secretive organisation known as the Seven Premiers. It is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots and those who have the very least live on the Saha Estates. Among their number is Jin-Kyung, a young woman whose brother, Dok-yung, was in a relationship with Su and quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. When Dok-yung disappears, Jin Ky-ung is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & classism
  • Sexual assault
  • Pregnancy & abortion
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Unethical human experimentation & medical procedures (on-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality
  • Animal cruelty

Field of Screams by Wendy Parris

Paranormal enthusiast Rebecca Graff isn’t happy about being dragged to Iowa to spend the summer with family she barely knows. But when she tracks a ghostly presence to an abandoned farmhouse, she starts to think the summer won’t be a total lost cause! The trouble is no one believes her. Then Rebecca finds a note stashed in a comic belonging to her late father—a note that proves the same spirit haunted him when he was twelve. Suddenly she feels a connection to the dad she pretends not to miss, and she is determined to uncover the story behind the haunting… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a twin sister/child by lightning strike mentioned

Penance by Eliza Clark

It’s been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time. That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the ‘definitive account’ of the murder – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & lesbophovia
  • Sexual assault of a child recounted (protagonist)
  • Necrophilia & hybristophilia discussed
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Death of a daughter from suicide mentioned
  • Death of a classmate from drowning mentioned
  • Murder by being burned alive (on-page)
  • School shooting mentioned
  • Bullying

Sula by Toni Morrison

Sula and Nel are two young black girls: clever and poor. They grow up together sharing their secrets, dreams and happiness. Then Sula breaks free from their small-town community in the uplands of Ohio to roam the cities of America. When she returns ten years later much has changed. Including Nel, who now has a husband and three children. The friendship between the two women becomes strained and the whole town grows wary as Sula continues in her wayward, vagabond and uncompromising ways.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racial slurs (n slur)
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse mentioned
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Death of a mother from suicide by fire (self-immolation)
  • Death of a man from being set on fire by his mother
  • Death of a child from an accidental drowning including further mentions of people drowning during a tunnel collapse
  • Physical assault of children mentioned
  • Battle scene recounted with mentions of the bloody death of a solider from gun violence

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s debut novel immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family – Pauline, Cholly, Sam and Pecola – in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Racism & colourism (theme)
  • Graphic rape of an 11-year-old child (on-page)*
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Physical, emotional & psychological child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of an infant
  • Housefire mentioned
  • Animal abuse, injury & death mentioned

Context: Includes passages from the paedophilic rapist’s perspective.

Mrs England by Stacey Halls

West Yorkshire, 1904. When newly graduated nurse Ruby May takes a position looking after the children of Charles and Lilian England, a wealthy couple from a powerful dynasty of mill owners, she hopes it will be the fresh start she needs. But as she adapts to life at the isolated Hardcastle House, it becomes clear there’s something not quite right about the beautiful, mysterious Mrs England. Ostracised by the servants and feeling increasingly uneasy, Ruby is forced to confront her own demons in order to prevent history from repeating itself. After all, there’s no such thing as the perfect family – and she should know.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Attempted murder of a child