Drug Use & Abuse – Page 72 – Trigger Warning Database

The Sweetest Oblivion by Danielle Lori

The Sweetest Oblivion by Danielle Lori

Nicknamed Sweet Abelli for her docile nature, Elena smiles on cue and has a charming response for everything. She’s the favored daughter, the perfect mafia principessa . . . or was.

Now, all she can see in the mirror’s reflection is blood staining her hands like crimson paint. They say first impressions are everything . . .

In the murky waters of New York’s underworld, Elena’s sister is arranged to marry Nicolas Russo. A Made Man, a boss, a cheat—even measured against mafia standards. His reputation stretches far and wide and is darker than his black suits and ties… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

Arranged marriage
Recreational drug use, off-page
Murder
Blackmail

In the Unlikely Event by LJ Shen

In the Unlikely Event by L.J. Shen

A one-night stand in a foreign land. We signed a contract on the back of a Boar’s Head Pub napkin that said if we ever met again, we would drop everything and be together. Eight years and thousands of miles later, he’s here. In New York. And he’s America’s music obsession. The intangible Irish poet who brings record executives to their knees. The blizzard in my perfect, unshaken snow globe. Last time we spoke, he was a beggar with no intention of becoming a king. I’m not the same broken princess Malachy Doherty put back together with his callused hands… but Mal kept the napkin.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

Domestic abuse recounted
Grey-area cheating
Suicide mentioned
Alcoholism
Drug abuse
Abortion mentioned
Cancer

The Awakening of Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Tiffany D Jackson

The Awakening of Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson

No one can be at peace until he has his freedom.

In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, Malcolm drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken — emerging from prison more than just Malcolm Little: Now, he is Malcolm X.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & white supremacy
Suicide mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Police brutality
Death row executions mentioned

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

In Life of the Party, Olivia Gatwood she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language—at times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant—she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Misogyny
Sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Self harm
Alcohol consumption
Smoking
Cancer
Murder

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They’re admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman. This discovery sparks Marin back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix. Permanently.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicidal ideation
Drug abuse
Overdose
Kidnapping of a child

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racist slurs
Slavery
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Autopsy
Murder
Physical assault
Flogging
Animal death
Animal experimentation

This Vast Land by Stephen E Ambrose

This Vast Land by Stephen E. Ambrose

In a story muscled with truth and imagination, Stephen E. Ambrose recounts the epoch-making 1803 expedition of Lewis and Clark through the words of a young man. Finding foes and friends among Native Americans, surviving sickness and hunger, choosing between a woman and the life he left behind, George Shannon grows up as the corps forges a way west. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, Ambrose creates the fictional diary of nineteen-year-old George Shannon, who was in fact the youngest member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. He conjures the journey west with stunning clarity, calling on the bravery of Daniel Boone, the pragmatic courage of Sacajawea, the overarching, relentless vision of Meriwether Lewis.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Alcohol consumption
Smoking
Murder
Scalping
War themes
Animal death

We Didn’t Ask for This by Adi Alsaid

We Didn’t Ask for This by Adi Alsaid

Central International School’s annual lock-in is legendary. Bonds are made. Contests are fought. Stories are forged that will be passed down from student to student for years to come.

This year’s lock-in begins normally enough. Then a group of students led by Marisa Cuevas stage an ecoprotest and chain themselves to the doors, vowing to keep everyone trapped inside until their list of demands is met.

Some students rally to their cause…but others are aggrieved to watch their own plans fall apart… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

Alcohol consumption
Smoking mentioned
Physical injury, specifically a broken leg
Hostage situation
Bullying

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett and Amelia Grace are forced to spend In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Domestic abuse
Child abuse
Substance addiction
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Pregnancy from rape
Graphic abortion
Autopsy
Decapitation
Death of a sister
Murder
Torture
Car accident
Imprisonment
Earthquake
Death of a pet

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

As the United States celebrates the nation’s “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status–much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racial slurs
Slavery discussed
Drug abuse
Incarceration (theme)