Saga, Vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga, Vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated Fiona Staples

Multiple storylines collide in this cosmos-spanning new volume. While Gwendolyn and Lying Cat risk everything to find a cure for The Will, Marko makes an uneasy alliance with Prince Robot IV to find their missing children, who are trapped on a strange world with terrifying new enemies.

CollectingSaga 25-30

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Grey-area cheating
  • Substance addiction
  • Hallucinations mentioned
  • Drug abuse & recreational drug use
  • Overdose
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Fire
  • Plane crash
  • Imprisonment
  • War themes & military violence (theme)
  • Animal death
  • Animal torture recounted
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Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd book cover

As the UK’s top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right – and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

From serial killer to natural disaster, ‘perfect murder’ to freak accident, Shepherd takes nothing for granted in pursuit of truth. And while he’s been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it’s often the less well known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.

But a life in death, bearing witness to some of humanity’s darkest corners, exacts a price and Shepherd doesn’t flinch from counting the cost to him and his family.

Goodreads The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Graphic descriptions of autopsies
  • Graphic descriptions of dead bodies
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Knife violence and stabbing
  • Car accidents
  • Terrorist attacks
  • Deaths in custody
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Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated Fiona Staples

When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe.

From bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan, Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in this sexy, subversive drama for adults.

CollectingSaga 1-6

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language including r slur
  • Racism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Child sexual slavery & forced sex work
  • Rape mentioned
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Trauma & PTSD, including flashbacks
  • Recreational drug use
  • Graphic childbirth (on-page)
  • Blood & gore depiction, including serious injury
  • Dead bodies
  • Death of a child recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • Stabbing
  • Imprisonment recounted
  • War themes & military violence (theme)
  • Animal death
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Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire

When her sister Patty died, Jenna blamed herself. When Jenna died, she blamed herself for that, too. Unfortunately Jenna died too soon. Living or dead, every soul is promised a certain amount of time, and when Jenna passed she found a heavy debt of time in her record. Unwilling to simply steal that time from the living, Jenna earns every day she leeches with volunteer work at a suicide prevention hotline.

But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide*
  • Suicidal ideation*
  • Grief depiction
  • Death themes
  • Death of a sister
  • Death of a husband
  • Death of a daughter
  • Murder
  • Loss of autonomy
  • Death of pet/s, specifically cats

*Main character works at a suicide hotline

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The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to Mister, a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Cultural appropriation, specifically Native American culture
  • Domestic violence
  • Physical, verbal & emotional abuse, including gaslighting
  • Rape, statutory rape & rape of a child
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Pregnancy, result of rape & incest
  • Forced estrangement
  • Cheating
  • Self-harm
  • Disordered eating (bingeing)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Female genital mutilation mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Lynching recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence mentioned
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of an infant

Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson

Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson

Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned by her single mother that the world was a dark and scary place. Having married into a family with wealth and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of: a loving lawyer husband, two talented teenage daughters, a new baby boy, a gorgeous home, and every opportunity in the world.

Until the day she awakens and sees an old gray-haired woman peering into her bedroom window who vanishes as quickly as she appears. She spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daugh­ters’ private school . . . just minutes before Bree’s infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow.

To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small—but critical—task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price, making her complicit in a tangled web of tragedy and shocking secrets that could destroy everything she loves.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut shaming
  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Nonconsensual pornography
  • Substance addiction
  • Overdose
  • Poisoning
  • Infanticide, attempted and threats of infanticide, central theme
  • Drugging of infants
  • Drowning of an infant
  • Bombs
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping and child abduction
  • Blackmail
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We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal book cover

Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya–but neither wants to be. War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & misogyny
  • Child emotional and verbal abuse & neglect
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a cousin
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment & captivity
  • Kidnapping & blackmail
  • War themes discussed
  • Animal death & hunting

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Angelfall by Susan Ee book cover

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back. Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel. Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexual harassment
  • Sex work, implied
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Parent with paranoid schizophrenia
  • Delusions and hallucinations mentioned
  • Nightmares
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood and gore depiction
  • Dead bodies and body parts
  • Cannibalism
  • Nonconsensual body modification (theme)
  • Graphic physical injuries
  • Dismemberment
  • Graphic human experimentation
  • Graphic scars
  • Death of children discussed
  • Murder and attempted murder
  • Knife & gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Torture
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping and captivity
  • War themes
  • Animal attack
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Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa­­–a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks–alone, except for her fox companion–searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers. But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Malaria & fevers
  • Dead bodies
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother & father, off-page
  • Death of a grandmother mentioned
  • Death of a child in a pedestrian-car accident, on- & off-page
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Mass death
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Stoning
  • Carjacking mentioned
  • Animal death (insects, repeated scenes)

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

When she stumbles across the advert, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss: a live-in nanny position, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten by the luxurious ‘smart’ home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare – one that will end with a child dead and her in a cell awaiting trial for murder.

She knows she’s made mistakes. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty – at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual harassment
  • Dubious consent scenario*
  • Physical, emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Cheating
  • Panic attack (on-page)
  • Suicide & self-harm mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction and physical injuries
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a sister
  • Murder
  • Poisoning (on- & off-page)
  • Death from a fall
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Incarceration

*Note: A fade-to-black sex scene where the protagonist is under the influence of alcohol.

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