Tag Archives: Genocide & Mass Murder

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace. It includes an author’s note and acknowledgments from Arn Chorn-Pond himself. Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Rape mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Cannibalism
  • Starvation
  • Death of a child
  • Cambodia’s Killing Fields (theme)
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Stabbing
  • Gun violence

Love Is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Love Is the Higher Law by David Levithan

The lives of three teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him. Here are three teens whose intertwining lives are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the other, their moments become wound around each other’s… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • 9/11 (theme)

Perfect Villain by JL Beck and Sade Rena

Perfect Villain by J.L. Beck & Sade Rena

The second our eyes connected I felt the shift in the air. The crackle of fire igniting between us. He was dark, dangerous, and secretive. He came into my life like a storm, ripping apart everything I believed in, everything I thought I knew. With his mischievous smirk, stunning looks, and alluring behaviour I should’ve ran as far away from him as I could. But I was stupid. I trapped myself in his web. I thought I was safe with him. Safe in his arms, safe from a past that refused to let go. Turns out Christian Russo was the past I was running from, and my first mistake was ever thinking I could escape him.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault & dubious consent scenarios
  • Infidelity*
  • Death of parents
  • Graphic murder
  • Organised crime (mafia)
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking

*Context: The heroine is in a relationship at the beginning of the novel and her boyfriend is cheating on her with her roommate. The hero and heroine get together before she breaks up with her current boyfriend.

The High Mountain Court by A.K. Mulford

The High Mountain Court by A.K. Mulford

Thirteen years fleeing witch hunters and the looming threat of death. Nineteen-year-old Remy knows she is possibly the last red witch alive, and she is determined to stay that way. The Northern Court King has slaughtered her home court and placed a bounty on red witch heads. When four fae warriors enter her tavern refuge, Remy tries to flee, but her magic isn’t strong enough to stop a fae prince on a mission. The handsome Prince Hale of the Eastern Kingdom wants to stop a war with the Northern Court before his kingdom befalls the same fate as Remy’s. He needs a red witch… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Genocide
  • War themes

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman. Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Self-injury
  • Cancer
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Graphic body horror
  • Dead bodies (theme)
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Death of children
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Genocide & mass murder
  • Infanticide
  • Child soldiers

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th-century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles. But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Slavery
  • Antisemitism
  • Queermisia
  • Rape mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking and medicinal drug use mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction including broken bones and knife wounds
  • Depiction of corpses
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Genocide recounted
  • Torture mentioned
  • Physical assault
  • Knife violence
  • Drowning
  • Fire
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • War themes
  • Animal death

Runebreaker by Alex Kahler

Runebreaker by Alex R. Kahler

Aidan desires only one thing: to rule. Arrogant, headstrong and driven by the element of Fire, he will stop at nothing to bring the evil Howls that destroyed Scotland to their knees. But Fire is a treacherous element, and the very magic that brought him to power could burn his world to ash. Especially with the blood of his fellow Hunters on his hands. Driven by a bloodlust he can’t control and dark whispers that may not be entirely in his head, he and his magic-eschewing friend Kianna will do whatever it takes to liberate their broken world. Even at the risk of confronting the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Body horror
  • Torture
  • Mass murder
  • Gun violence

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

In his fortress at Inuyama, the murderous warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard. Brought up in a remote village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people, Takeo has learned only the ways of peace. Why, then, does he possess the deadly skills that make him so valuable to the sinister Tribe? These supernatural powers will lead him to his violent destiny within the walls of Inuyama – and to an impossible longing for a girl who can never be his.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Child abuse
  • Death of a child
  • Genocide
  • Torture
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The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions. Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Nazism
  • Infidelity
  • Facial scar
  • Death of grandparents in a concentration camp during the Holocaust

All That Remains by Sue Black

All That Remains by Sue Black

Sue Black confronts death every day. As Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and what her work has taught her. Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue’s book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Graphic dead bodies
  • Murder & genocide
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Natural disasters