Gun Violence – Trigger Warning Database

Codebreaker by Jay Martel

Mia Hayes has peaceful plans for the summer—find a part-time job at a coffee shop and work on her application for Harvard. Those plans are shattered one night when government agents arrive unannounced at her home seeking something they believe her father has taken. When the dust settles, her mother is dead and her father is gone, a fugitive on the run. Three weeks later, and still reeling from her father’s betrayal, Mia spends her seventeenth birthday at a protest in the heart of D.C., where she meets Logan, a rebellious and charming hacker. Just as she’s enjoying… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Minor injury depiction, including a concussion & gunshot wounds
Grief & loss depiction
Death of parents in a car accident recounted
Car chase, resulting in a car falling into the river and a fatal drowning
Gun violence
Physical assault (fistfights)

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come by Jen St. Jude

Avery Byrne has secrets. She’s queer; she’s in love with her best friend, Cass; and she’s suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. But on the morning Avery plans to jump into the river near her college campus, the world discovers there are only nine days left to an asteroid is headed for Earth, and no one can stop it. Trying to spare her family and Cass additional pain, Avery does her best to make it through just nine more days. As time runs out and secrets slowly come to light, Avery would do anything to save the ones she loves. But most importantly, she learns… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Homophobia & religious bigotry
Depression & suicidal ideation
Suicide of a secondary character (discussed, off-page)
Attempted suicide discussed (protagonist)
Alcohol consumption
Gun violence
Home invasion

The Close-Up by Pip Drysdale

When Zoe Ann Weiss moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, her whole future is wide open. But then Zach, the bartender and aspiring actor she’s falling for, ghosts her. Her debut novel, a thriller, fails. And she has writer’s block worse than ever before. Now, three years later, Zach is famous and Zoe is… not. She’s facing her thirtieth birthday, a dead-end job at a flower shop, and a demanding agent, terrified she’ll never get her life back on track. But when she goes to make a flower delivery and Zach is at the address, it’s like no time has passed at all.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Kidnapping & stalking
Gun violence

Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone

It’s officially booty o’clock, I’m alone again in my kitchen choking down a slice of terrible chocolate cake…and I’m pretty sure I just got drunk texted by the man I have a ginormous crush on. I’ve been daydreaming about Eliot Hoffman’s dimples for two months, and even though I’m sure this was a mistake on his end, it doesn’t mean it’s not an opportunity on mine. It’s the middle of the night, and I just wanna talk to him. So I text him back. And then somehow we keep talking…ALL NIGHT. We’re both insomniacs, so talking all night soon turns into talking EVERY night. And talking.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Parental abandonment recounted
Secondary character with alcoholism
Anxiety & panic attack
Parent with terminal cancer
Home invasion & threats of gun violence (protagonist)

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling’s epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Two men – Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest – are fired by a quest. Kim is white, although born in India. While he wants to play the Great Game of imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands. A celebration of their friendship in an often hostile environment, Kim captures the opulence of India’s exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Recreational drug use
Blood depiction
Gun violence
Knife violence & stabbing
War themes

Us Dark Few by Alexis Patton

Khalani is a Prisoner. Takeshi is a Guard. Both are slaves to the Underground. Khalani Kanes has never stood on the surface of the earth. In the underground city of Apollo, faith and dreams are as absent as the sun. She longed to visit Genesis, the infamous Domed City and the final place where humanity lives aboveground. But when Khalani is given a life sentence and thrown into prison for a theft she didn’t commit, those wishes shatter into oblivion. In Braderhelm Prison, murderers are neighbors, ruthless and cold-blooded guards live to punish, and every second is a battle… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sexual assault & attempted rape, thwarted by the perpetrator being beaten to death & having his eyes plucked out
Physical child abuse & domestic violence recounted, resulting in the love interest murdering his step-father in revenge for murdering his mother
Suicidal ideation (protagonist, on-page)
Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
Decapitation mentioned
Murder of a mother & father recounted (protagonist)
Physical assault & death in ‘fight pits’
Mass shooting mentioned
Imprisonment (theme), including inhumane treatment of prisoners through electrocution, starvation, and being worked to death
Nuclear fallout & terrorism recounted (post-apocalyptic world, set 300 years after the events)

Us Deadly Few by Alexis Patton

Khalani Kanes never imagined surviving Braderhelm Prison, let alone escaping to the desolate surface they had been told was uninhabitable. Haunted by the Governor of Apollo’s dark secrets, Khalani and her crew of criminals embark on a new perilous journey. Now, the true test begins as Khalani ventures through the treacherous “Death-Zone” toward the nearest underground city, Hermes. Abandoned relics of a once-great nation are not the only threats on the barren road. Violent storms sweep across the Death-Zone, the deadly Takeshi Steele has resumed…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Sexual assault & attempted rape, thwarted by the perpetrator being beaten to death & having his eyes plucked out
Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
Drugging
Physical injury, including mention of secondary character going into septic shot from an arrow wound
Graphic fantasy violence including explosions, bombings, weapon violence (bow & arrow), physical assault/fight scenes & murder by gun violence
Torture, including electrocution, knife violence & lobotomy-like medical experimentation
Nuclear fallout & terrorism recounted (post-apocalyptic world, set 300 years after the events)
Kidnapping

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Police shooting

You’ll Never Know by Caleb Stephens

Grant Wilson has never been happier. He has a wife he loves, a home in the country, and a brand-new baby on the way. But all of that shatters when two masked men abduct his wife, Avery, in broad daylight. The instructions Grant receives are bizarre: If he wants Avery back, he must solve a series of riddles that arrive one after another—and the clock is ticking. With every piece of the puzzle more outrageous and complex than the last, Grant knows he’s playing a dangerous game. But he’s determined to do whatever it takes to save Avery’s life … even if it kills him.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Domestic violence
Suicide
Abortion mentioned
Heart attack mentioned
Death of a child & partner
Gun violence
Fatal car accident
Kidnapping of a pregnant wife (theme)

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Alexander C. Eberhart

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong. So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection. My clues are even… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Substance addiction mentioned
Gun violence