Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olson

Cast into a well at birth for being one of the magical few who can manipulate memories when people sing, she was saved by Cyril, the opera house’s owner. Since that day, he has given her sanctuary from the murderous world outside. All he asks in return is that she use her power to keep ticket sales high—and that she stay out of sight. For if anyone discovers she survived, Isda and Cyril would pay with their lives.

But Isda breaks Cyril’s cardinal rule when she meets Emeric Rodin, a charming boy who throws her quiet, solitary life out of balance. His voice is unlike any she’s ever heard, but the real shock comes when she finds in his memories hints of a way to finally break free of her gilded prison.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Emotional abuse
  • Toxic relationship
  • Self-harm
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child
  • Grief and loss depiction
  • Gun violence
  • Confinement
  • Torture
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The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Meet Mma Ramotswe, the endearing, engaging, simply irresistible proprietress of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the first and only detective agency in Botswana. With persistent observation, gentle intuition, and a keen desire to help people with the problems of their lives, she solves mysteries great and small for friends and strangers alike.

In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, and good humor—not to mention help from her loyal assistant, Grace Makutsi, and the occasional cup of tea.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Miscarriage
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Fifty Shades Freed by EL James

Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

When unworldly student Anastasia Steele first encountered the driven and dazzling young entrepreneur Christian Grey it sparked a sensual affair that changed both of their lives irrevocably. Shocked, intrigued, and, ultimately, repelled by Christian’s singular erotic tastes, Ana demands a deeper commitment. Determined to keep her, Christian agrees.

Now, Ana and Christian have it all—love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Ana must somehow learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own identity. And Christian must overcome his compulsion to control as he wrestles with the demons of a tormented past.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted sexual assault recounted
  • Statutory rape recounted
  • Cheating mentioned
  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Hospitalisation
  • Parent in a medically-induced coma because of a car accident
  • Death of a mother from an overdose recounted
  • Attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping & attempted kidnapping
  • Blackmail
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Switch by A. S. King

Switch by A. S. King

Switch by A. S. King

Tru Beck is a teenage girl from Pennsylvania who lives in a world that has become trapped in a fold in time and space, where “real” time has stopped but humanity continues to mark artificial time based on a website called N3WCLOCK.com. Tru lives in a house that has a switch at its center. No one knows what the switch controls, but her father continually builds larger and larger boxes around the switch (Tru lives in Box #7). Tru leaves the box through a Tru-shaped hole to go to school, where she pays no attention to the new “Solution Time” curriculum. In fact, the only interesting thing that’s ever happened to Tru at school is when she discovers (on her first try) that she can throw a javelin farther than any human has ever thrown anything before in human history.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Toxic relationship
  • Domestic abuse
  • Emotional abuse
  • Physical abuse
  • Paedophilia implied
  • Statutory mentioned
  • Mental illness
  • Suicidal thoughts
  • Animal cruelty
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia, including internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Rape recounted
  • Parental abuse
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Substance addiction
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
  • Cancer
  • Death of a grandparent
  • Vietnam War discussed
  • Animal abuse
  • Bullying
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Insomnia by Stephen King

Insomnia by Stephen King

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovers this when she is nine years old. Lost in the woods.

Trisha has only veered a little way off the path. But in her panic to get back to her family, she takes a turning that leads into the tangled undergrowth, deeper into the woods.

At first it’s just the bugs, midges and mosquitoes. Then comes the hunger. For comfort she tunes her Walkman into broadcasts of the Red Sox baseball games and the performances of her hero Tom Gordon.

As darkness begins to fall and Trisha struggles for survival and a way out, she realizes that she is not alone. There’s something else in the woods – watching. Waiting…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Sleep maintenance insomnia (theme)
  • Cancer
  • Abortion
  • Fire
  • Animal abuse
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Duma Key by Stephen King

Duma Key by Stephen King

When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key to escape his past, he doesn’t expect to find much there.

But Duma has been waiting for him. The shells beneath his house are whispering to him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had.

Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. And as he paints, the island’s secrets begin to stir. Secrets of children lost in the undertow, of a ghost ship riding the distant horizon – and a family’s buried past reaching long hands into the present.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Attempted suicide by gunshot recounted
  • Dementia
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injuries from a workplace accident, including an amputated right arm and a head injury impairing speech, vision and memory
  • Death of a wife & daughter recounted
  • Death of a sister by drowning
  • Paternal flicide by drowning
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Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Suspected of murdering the crippled widow for whom she worked as a housekeeper and companion, Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell. But it isn’t the one the police are expecting to hear. It’s a little darker, a little stranger – and a lot more horrifying.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Marital rape
  • Paedophilia & incestuous child sexual abuse (father-daughter)
  • Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
  • Hallucinations
  • Dementia
  • Stroke recounted
  • Death of a husband in a car accident
  • Murder
  • Death from a fall
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Cujo by Stephen King

Cujo by Stephen King

Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting… Cujo is a huge Saint Bernard dog, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day Cujo chases a rabbit into a bolt-hole, a cave inhabited by some very sick bats. What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inexorably drawing in all the people around him.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence
  • Stalking
  • Gun violence
  • Animal attack, including death from a dog attack (theme)
  • Animal death (dog)
  • Animal injury & illness
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‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work—in fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic abuse
  • Cheating
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcoholism
  • Death of a child
  • Disappearance of a child
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