Saga, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated Fiona Staples

Searching for their literary hero, new parents Marko and Alana travel to a cosmic lighthouse on the planet Quietus, while the couple’s multiple pursuers finally close in on their targets.

CollectingSaga 13-18.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Dubious consent scenario*
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Grey-area cheating
  • Substance addiction
  • Hallucinations mentioned
  • Drug abuse & recreational drug use
  • Graphic childbirth
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a son
  • Death of a mother & wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
  • War themes & military violence (theme)
  • Animal death

*Note: Sex scene with a protagonist under the influence of recreational drugs.

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Saga, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Saga, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated Fiona Staples

Thanks to her star-crossed parents Marko and Alana, newborn baby Hazel has already survived lethal assassins, rampaging armies, and alien monstrosities, but in the cold vastness of outer space, the little girl encounters something truly frightening: her grandparents!

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Child sexual slavery & forced sex work
  • Rape mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of a partner
  • Death of a husband & father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • War themes & military violence (theme)
  • Animal death
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Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma. Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals – the old art known as the Wit – gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Adult-minor relationship discussed
  • Parental abandonment
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Suicide, attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Depression
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
  • Infertility mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Physical injuries
  • Death of a father & husband
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Poisoning
  • Torture
  • Whipping
  • War themes
  • Graphic animal death, including multiple death of pet dogs
  • Animal cruelty & abuse
  • Hunting
  • Animal attack mentioned

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis book cover

Lynn knows every threat to her pond: drought, a snowless winter, coyotes, and, most importantly, people looking for a drink. She makes sure anyone who comes near the pond leaves thirsty, or doesn’t leave at all. Confident in her own abilities, Lynn has no use for the world beyond the nearby fields and forest. Having a life means dedicating it to survival, and the constant work of gathering wood and water. Having a pond requires the fortitude to protect it, something. Mother taught her well during their quiet hours on the rooftop, rifles in hand. But wisps of smoke on the horizon… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Rape & attempted rape recounted, and forced sex work (off-page)
  • Child abuse & intimate partner violence recounted
  • Suicide (on-page) & suicidal ideation
  • Pregnancy & childbirth (on-page), including stillbirth (on-page)
  • Blood & injury depiction, including dead bodies, graphic physical injuries & illness (cholera, seizures, fever), field surgery, and syringes & needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a brother
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Blackmail
  • Fire
  • Drought including death from starvation & dehydration
  • Death from exposure
  • Military deployment recounted
  • Animal death & death of a pet (on-page), including hunting & animal dead bodies
  • Animal cruelty

Asylum by Patrick McGrath

Asylum by Patrick McGrath

In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting–a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant and magnetic sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage.

But Stella’s knowledge of Edgar’s crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues–a passion that will consume Stella’s sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Psychosis
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder
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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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Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire book cover

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you’ve got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Death of queer characters/ “bury your gays” trope
  • Forced gender roles, central theme
  • Parental neglect
  • Mysophobia
  • Pregnancy discussed
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Vampirism & blood drinking
  • Dead bodies
  • Death of a girlfriend, on-page
  • Murder
  • Lightning & storms mentioned
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Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire book cover

The fifth installment in Seanan McGuire’s award-winning, bestselling Wayward Children series, Come Tumbling Down picks up the threads left dangling by Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones

When Jack left Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister–whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice–back to their home on the Moors.

But death in their adopted world isn’t always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome.

Eleanor West’s “No Quests” rule is about to be broken.

Again.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
  • Mysophobia
  • Dysphoria
  • Minor blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Resurrection, on-page
  • Vampirism & blood drinking mentioned
  • Medical experiments with corerced consent recounted
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a girlfriend recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of a mentor, off-the-page
  • Murder recounted
  • Lightning storm
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The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

The Empress of Salt & Fortune by Nghi Vo

A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage. Alone and sometimes reviled, she has only her servants on her side. This evocative debut chronicles her rise to power through the eyes of her handmaiden, at once feminist high fantasy and a thrilling indictment of monarchy.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Body shaming
  • Misogyny
  • Parental abandonment
  • Arranged marriage
  • Suicide discussed
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned
  • Nonconsensual & consensual adoption
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a partner & wife mentioned
  • Murder
  • Exile
  • War themes, including rebellion & a political coup

To Love and to Loathe by Martha Waters

To Love & to Loathe by Martha Waters

The widowed Diana, Lady Templeton and Jeremy, Marquess of Willingham are infamous among English high society as much for their sharp-tongued bickering as their flirtation. One evening, an argument at a ball turns into a serious wager: Jeremy will marry within the year or Diana will forfeit one hundred pounds. So shortly after, just before a fortnight-long house party at Elderwild, Jeremy’s country estate, Diana is shocked when Jeremy appears at her home with a very different kind of proposition.

After his latest mistress unfavorably criticized his skills in the bedroom, Jeremy is looking for reassurance, so he has gone to the only woman he trusts to be totally truthful. He suggests that they embark on a brief affair while at the house party—Jeremy can receive an honest critique of his bedroom skills and widowed Diana can use the gossip to signal to other gentlemen that she is interested in taking a lover.

Diana thinks taking him up on his counter-proposal can only help her win her wager. With her in the bedroom and Jeremy’s marriage-minded grandmother, the formidable Dowager Marchioness of Willingham, helping to find suitable matches among the eligible ladies at Elderwild, Diana is confident her victory is assured. But while they’re focused on winning wagers, they stand to lose their own hearts.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Gambling addiction mentioned
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Death of a husband recounted
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