If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

In this powerful and imaginative debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar nakedly captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by braiding together personal and marginalized people’s histories. After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar’s poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Genocide
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One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews

One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Dina DeMille may run the nicest Bed and Breakfast in Red Deer, Texas, but she caters to a very particular kind of guest… the kind that no one on Earth is supposed to know about. Guests like a former intergalactic tyrant with an impressive bounty on her head, the Lord Marshal of a powerful vampire clan, and a displaced-and-superhot werewolf; so don’t stand too close, or you may be collateral damage.

But what passes for Dina’s normal life is about to be thrown into chaos. First, she must rescue her long-distant older sister, Maud, who’s been exiled with her family to a planet that functions as the most lawless penal colony since Botany Bay. Then she agrees to help a guest whose last chance at saving his civilization could bring death and disaster to all Dina holds dear… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a spouse recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Disappearance of a parent recounted
  • War themes
  • Genocide
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The Kingdoms of Ruin, Vol. 1 by Yoruhashi

The Kingdoms of Ruin, Vol. 1 by Yoruhashi

For ages, humanity flourished through the power of magic, a gift from witches to aid mankind. But times have changed. The scientific Gear Expansion has made both magic and witches obsolete. In order to liberate humanity from the blight of magic, the mighty Redia Empire began a ruthless hunt to exterminate all witches. Adonis was only a boy when the hunt began, apprentice to a witch he dearly loved. When she perishes at the hands of the empire, Adonis vows revenge. By this furious wizard’s power, blood will flow!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual slavery
  • Body horror
  • Death of a parent
  • Mass murder
  • Concentration camps
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The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power?… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a child by drowning mentioned
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Physical assault recounted
  • War themes & battle scenes
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Indelible by Karin Slaughter

Indelible by Karin Slaughter

When medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver take a trip away from the small town of Heartsdale, it should be a straightforward weekend at the beach. But they decide to take a detour via Jeffrey’s hometown and things go violently wrong when Jeffrey’s best friend Robert shoots dead an intruder who breaks into his home. Jeffrey and Sara are first on the scene and Jeffrey’s keen to clear his friend’s name, but for Sara things aren’t so simple. And when Jeffrey appears to change the crime scene, Sara no longer knows who to trust… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Rape
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Domestic abuse
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Mass shooting
  • Hostage situation
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The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith

The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith

Once again blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, Andrew Smith tells the story of 15-year-old Ariel, a refugee from the Middle East who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel’s story of his summer at a boys’ camp for tech detox is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century. Oh, and there’s also a depressed bionic reincarnated crow. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Starvation mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a brother mentioned
  • Mass murder by gun violence & poison gas recounted
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Explosions
  • Physical assault mentioned
  • Refugee experiences
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Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill by Bryan Smith

Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill by Bryan Smith

Ten years ago on Christmas Eve, Silas Herzinger donned a Santa suit and took an axe to 15 members of his extended family. Luke Herzinger, his youngest son, was the sole survivor of the infamous Herzinger Family Massacre. Now, after a decade away, a despondent and suicidal Luke has come home to face his past and battle the evil that still resides in the old family home on Haunted Hill.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder & mass murder
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On the Horizon by Lois Lowry

On the Horizon by Lois Lowry & illustrated by Kenard Pak

On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were lost or forever altered by the twin tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Composed of poems about individual sailors who lost their lives on the Arizona and about the citizens of Hiroshima who experienced unfathomable horror. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Explosion & bombings
  • Fire
  • World War Two, including Pearl Harbour & Hiroshima
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Lady of Shadows by Breanna Teintze

Lady of Shadows by Breanna Teintze

Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray expected death to be final, but life, and his loved ones, had other plans. A year after being resurrected and flung into a new body, he’s still trying to come to terms with his situation – and his self – when the all-powerful Mages’ Guild demands his help to stop a deadly plague.

He’s inclined to refuse the organisation that still wants him dead, until his partner Brix starts showing symptoms – to save her, Gray will do anything, even if it means working with his greatest enemies.

But it quickly becomes clear that this is no normal plague. The situation is more complicated, and more lethal, than anyone has realised. Ancient dangers are stirring, and thousands of lives are at stake . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Slavery recounted
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Nightmares
  • Plague
  • Graphic dead body
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury & illness
  • Emesis
  • Paralysis
  • Murder
  • Mass murder recounted
  • Explosion
  • Hanging mentioned
  • Imprisonment
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A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.

But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.

Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Sexual assault
  • Rape mentioned
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Torture
  • Genocide & mass murder
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