The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

In the six months since Anthony, Lucy, and George survived a night in the most haunted house in England, Lockwood & Co. hasn’t made much progress. Quill Kipps and his team of Fittes agents keep swooping in on Lockwood’s investigations. Finally, in a fit of anger, Anthony challenges his rival to a contest: the next time the two agencies compete on a job, the losing side will have to admit defeat in the Times newspaper.

Things look up when a new client, Mr. Saunders, hires Lockwood & Co. to be present at the excavation of Edmund Bickerstaff, a Victorian doctor who reportedly tried to communicate with the dead. Saunders needs the coffin sealed with silver to prevent any supernatural trouble. All goes well-until George’s curiosity attracts a horrible phantom… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Sexism
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries
  • Medical experimentation
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
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The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions.

Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest, most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood. When one of their cases goes horribly wrong, Lockwood & Co. have one last chance of redemption. Unfortunately this involves spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide & attempted suicide (on-page)
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries
  • Hospitalisation
  • Death of a mother & father recounted
  • Murder
  • Explosion
  • Fire
  • Drowning
  • Torture
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The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.

Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Human trafficking
  • Physical parental abuse
  • Child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Amnesia (memory loss)
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Medical experimentation
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Death of a wife
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
  • Drowning
  • Earthquakes
  • Disappearance of a loved one
  • Child homelessness & poverty recounted
  • Rebellion themes & regicide
  • Animal attack
  • Animal injury & illness
  • Animal abuse
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What We Left Behind by Robin Talley

What We Left Behind by Robin Talley

Toni and Gretchen are the couple everyone envied in high school. They’ve been together forever. They never fight. They’re deeply, hopelessly in love. When they separate for their first year at college—Toni to Harvard and Gretchen to NYU—they’re sure they’ll be fine. Where other long-distance relationships have fallen apart, theirs is bound to stay rock-solid.

The reality of being apart, though, is very different than they expected. Toni, who identifies as genderqueer, meets a group of transgender upperclassmen and immediately finds a sense of belonging that has always been missing, but Gretchen struggles to remember who she is outside their relationship… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia & transmisic slurs
  • Homomsia
  • Lesbomisia
  • Queermisia
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As I Descended by Robin Talley

As I Descended by Robin Talley

Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them.

Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey.

Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Queermisia
  • Outing
  • Disownment
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide
  • Forced drug use
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Drowning
  • Bullying
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Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie

Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie

Bone Crier's Moon by Kathryn Purdie book cover

Bone ​Criers have a sacred duty. They alone can keep the dead from preying on the living. But their power to ferry the spirits of the dead into goddess Elara’s Night Heavens or Tyrus’s Underworld comes from sacrifice. The gods demand a promise of dedication. And that promise comes at the cost of the Bone Criers’ one true love.

Ailesse has been prepared since birth to become the matriarch of the Bone Criers, a mysterious famille of women who use strengths drawn from animal bones to ferry dead souls. But first she must complete her rite of passage and kill the boy she’s also destined to love.

Bastien’s father was slain by a Bone Crier and he’s been seeking revenge ever since. Yet when he finally captures one, his vengeance will have to wait. Ailesse’s ritual has begun and now their fates are entwined—in life and in death.

Sabine has never had the stomach for the Bone Criers’ work. But when her best friend Ailesse is taken captive, Sabine will do whatever it takes to save her, even if it means defying their traditions—and their matriarch—to break the bond between Ailesse and Bastien. Before they all die.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abandonment
  • Pregnancy discussed
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Grief depiction
  • Death themes
  • Death of a father, on-page
  • Death of a mother, on-page
  • Murder
  • Attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • Torture
  • Strangulation
  • Kidnapping
  • Captivty
  • Near-drowning incident
  • Graphic animal death
  • Graphic animal dead bodies and dismemberment
  • Hunting
  • Poverty themes
  • Child homelessness
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Nowhere Near You by Leah Thomas

Nowhere Near You by Leah Thomas

Ollie and Moritz might never meet, but their friendship knows no bounds. Their letters carry on as Ollie embarks on his first road trip away from the woods–no easy feat for a boy allergic to electricity–and Moritz decides which new school would best suit an eyeless boy who prefers to be alone.

Along the way they meet other teens like them, other products of strange science who lead seemingly normal lives in ways Ollie and Moritz never imagined possible: A boy who jokes about his atypical skeleton; an aspiring actress who hides a strange deformity; a track star whose abnormal heart propels her to victory. Suddenly the future feels wide open for two former hermits. But even as Ollie and Moritz dare to enjoy life, they can’t escape their past, which threatens to destroy any progress they’ve made. Can these boys ever find their place in a world that might never understand them?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted rape
  • Forced drug use
  • Terminal cancer
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a friend
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Bus accident
  • Bullying mentioned

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures. Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals with a bully set on destroying him.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language (r slur)
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Victim blaming
  • Child abuse
  • Manic depression
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Childbirth
  • Paralysis
  • Cancer
  • Epilepsy & seizures
  • Hospital
  • Life-threatening weight loss
  • Needles
  • Asphyxia (choking)
  • Poisoning mentioned
  • Drowning
  • Animal death & abuse

Song of the Current by Sarah Tolcser

Song of the Current by Sarah Tolcser

Caroline Oresteia is destined for the river. For generations, her family has been called by the river god, who has guided their wherries on countless voyages throughout the Riverlands. At seventeen, Caro has spent years listening to the water, ready to meet her fate. But the river god hasn’t spoken her name yet—and if he hasn’t by now, there’s a chance he never will.

Caro decides to take her future into her own hands when her father is arrested for refusing to transport a mysterious crate. By agreeing to deliver it in exchange for his release, Caro finds herself caught in a web of politics and lies, with dangerous pirates after the cargo—an arrogant courier with a secret—and without the river god to help her. With so much at stake, Caro must choose between the life she always wanted and the one she never could have imagined for herself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Classism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Attempted sexual assault (nonconsensual kiss, on-page & discussed)
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Arranged & nonconsensual marriages discussed
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Graphic physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a mother & father (off-page)
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture (off-page)
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Fire
  • Drowning
  • Shipwreck
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • War themes, including regicide, rebellion, coup & colonialism

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

Security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.

Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out—for her and possibly for the world.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Drowning
  • Animal death
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