The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud

The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud

After leaving Lockwood & Co., Lucy is a freelance operative, hiring herself out to agencies that value her ever-improving skills. One day she is pleasantly surprised by a visit from Lockwood, who tells her he needs a good Listener for a tough assignment.

Penelope Fittes, the leader of the giant Fittes Agency wants them–and only them–to locate and remove the Source for the legendary Brixton Cannibal. They succeed in their very dangerous task, but tensions remain high between Lucy and the other agents. Even the skull in the jar talks to her like a jilted lover.

What will it take to reunite the team? Black marketeers, an informant ghost, a Spirit Cape that transports the wearer, and mysteries involving Steve Rotwell and Penelope Fittes just may do the trick.  

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Persecution for witchcraft mentioned
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries
  • Dismemberment
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a mother, father & sister recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • Animal cruelty (minor)
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The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud

The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud

As a massive outbreak of supernatural Visitors baffles Scotland Yard and causes protests throughout London, Lockwood & Co. continue to demonstrate their effectiveness in exterminating spirits. Anthony Lockwood is dashing, George insightful, and Lucy dynamic, while the skull in the jar utters sardonic advice from the sidelines. There is a new spirit of openness in the team now that Lockwood has shared some of his childhood secrets, and Lucy is feeling more and more as if her true home is at Portland Row. It comes as a great shock, then, when Lockwood and George introduce her to an annoyingly perky and hyper-efficient new assistant, Holly Munro.

Meanwhile, there are reports of many new hauntings, including a house where bloody footprints are appearing, and a department store full of strange sounds and shadowy figures… Read More.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother, father & sister recounted
  • Death of a child
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • Fire
  • Homelessness
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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 Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

The Devil & the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel. Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcoholism
  • Physical & emotional domestic abuse
  • Rape mentioned
  • Immolation
  • Murder
  • Animal death
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Moriarty the Patriot, Vol. 1 by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and Hikaru Miyoshi

Moriarty the Patriot, Vol. 1 by Ryōsuke Takeuchi & illustrated by Hikaru Miyoshi

Before he was Sherlock’s rival, Moriarty fought against the unfair class caste system in London by making sure corrupt nobility got their comeuppance. But even the most well-intentioned plans can spin out of control—will Moriarty’s dream of a more just and equal world turn him into a hero…or a monster?

In the late 19th century, Great Britain rules over a quarter of the world. Nobles sit in their fancy homes in comfort and luxury, while the working class slaves away at their jobs. When young Albert James Moriarty’s upper-class family adopts two lower-class orphans, the cruelty the boys experience at his family’s hands cements Albert’s hatred of the nobility he was born into. He asks the older of the two boys—who has a genius mind and a killer instinct—to help him rid the world of evil, starting with Albert’s own family! 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Drug abuse
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Poisoning
  • Arson
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The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre by Robin Talley

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre by Robin Talley

Melody McIntyre, stage manager extraordinaire, has a plan for everything. What she doesn’t have? Success with love. Every time she falls for someone during a school performance, both the romance and the show end in catastrophe. So, Mel swears off any entanglements until their upcoming production of Les Mis is over.

Of course, Mel didn’t count on Odile Rose, rising star in the acting world, auditioning for the spring performance. And she definitely didn’t expect Odile to be sweet and funny, and care as much about the play’s success as Mel.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut shaming
  • Emesis
  • Fire recounted
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Harley Quinn: Break Glass by Mariko Tamaki

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Steve Pugh

Harleen is a tough, outspoken, rebellious kid who lives in a ramshackle apartment above a karaoke cabaret owned by a drag queen named MAMA. Ever since Harleen’s parents split, MAMA has been her only family. When the cabaret becomes the next victim in the wave of gentrification that’s taking over the neighborhood, Harleen gets mad.

When Harleen decides to turn her anger into action, she is faced with two choices: join Ivy, who’s campaigning to make the neighborhood a better place to live, or join The Joker, who plans to take down Gotham one corporation at a time.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Gentrification
  • Explosions
  • Fire
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Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”, she speaks many languages – not all of them human – and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist & fat-shaming language
  • Parental abandonment
  • Suicide
  • Physical injuries
  • Attempted murder
  • Gun violence recounted
  • Fire
  • Death by a fall
  • Stalking mentioned
  • War themes
  • Animal hunting
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Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer book cover

Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” But when her mom brings home a live specimen, Nita decides she wants out — dissecting living people is a step too far.

But when she tries to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold on the black market in his place — because Nita herself is a supernatural being. Now Nita is on the other side of the bars, and there is no line she won’t cross to escape and make sure no one can ever capture her again.

Nita did a good deed, and it cost her everything. Now she’s going to do a lot of bad deeds to get it all back.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia mentioned
  • Emotional parental abuse
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Torture
  • Explosions
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
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