Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept.

Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness.

But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets.

In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Attempted rape recounted (chp. 23)
  • Child abuse recounted, including being locked in the attics for extended periods of tie
  • Agoraphobia
  • Panic attack (chp. 24)
  • Death of a mother to suicide recounted
  • Recreational drug use (on-page in chp. 5 & mentioned otherwise)
  • Hospital (chp. 5 & 24)
  • Grief & loss (theme)
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a stepfather (off-page)
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Gun violence (chp. 28)
  • Police violence (chp. 28)
  • Hanging mentioned (chp. 9)
  • Near-drowning incident
  • Car accident (on-page, chp. 23-24)
  • Death of a child to a wasp attack recounted
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley book cover

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and dea… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, misogyny & fatphobia
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Sexual harassment
  • Rape of a minor & sexual assault (on-page)
  • Cheating recounted
  • Child abuse & neglect mentioned
  • Substance addiction discussed
  • Nightmares
  • Suicide by gunshot to the head (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use & abuse (theme) with mentions of overdose
  • Teen pregnancy recounted
  • Grandparent recovering from a stroke
  • Physical injuries, including nerve damage & chronic shoulder injury
  • Hospitalisation for internalised bleeding & liver damage with mentions of surgery
  • Emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of an uncle & father
  • Murder of a friend & teenager by gun violence (on-page)
  • Car accident (on- & off-page)
  • Bullying

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson

How is it that unsavory raw ingredients come together to form a delicious cake? What is it about life that when you take all the hard stuff and rough stuff and add in a lot of love, you still just might have a wonderful life?

For Serenity, these questions rise up early when her father kills her mother, and leaves her and her brother Danny to live with their kind but strict grandparents. Despite the difficulties of a new school, a new church, and a new neighborhood, Serenity gains strength from the family around her, the new friends she finds, and her own careful optimism.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic violence
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Poverty themes
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Network Effect by Martha Wells

Network Effect by Martha Wells

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you’re a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you’re Murderbot.

When Murderbot’s human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Indentured servitude & slavery discussed
  • Amnesia
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Contagion
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Explosions
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation
  • Loss of autonomy discussed
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah’s SecUnit is.

And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Self-sacrifice
  • Physical injuries
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Loss of autonomy discussed
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Dubious consent to sex work discussed*
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Surgery for coerced body modifications
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Mass murder recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion mentioned
  • Kidnapping
  • Attempted plane crash
  • Mind control discussed

*Note: Android sex workers have a limited or no ability to override their mind control-like regulating system and therefore are unable to truly consent.

Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Alone in the Wild by Kelley Armstrong

Alone in the Wild by Kelley Armstrong

Alone in the Wild by Kelley Armstrong book cover

Every season in Rockton seems to bring a new challenge. At least that’s what Detective Casey Duncan has felt since she decided to call this place home. Between all the secretive residents, the sometimes-hostile settlers outside, and the surrounding wilderness, there’s always something to worry about.

While on a much needed camping vacation with her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, Casey hears a baby crying in the woods. The sound leads them to a tragic scene: a woman buried under the snow, murdered, a baby still alive in her arms… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Forced sex work, mentioned
  • Sexual slavery, mentioned
  • Recreational drug use
  • Blood depiction
  • Death and loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal injury
  • Animal death
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.

Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan‘s peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what’s ahead

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Gun violence
  • Military violence & war themes
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She’s a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn’s paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of parents
  • Gun violence
  • Military violence & war themes
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Spill Zone, Vol. 2: The Broken Vow by Scott Westerfeld and Alex Puvilland

Spill Zone, Vol. 2: The Broken Vow by Scott Westerfeld & Alex Puvilland

Three years ago an event destroyed the small city of Poughkeepsie, forever changing reality within its borders. Strange manifestations and lethal dangers now await anyone who enters the Spill Zone. Addison got close enough to the Spill Zone to touch it, literally. She survived the encounter, but came back changed.

It turns out she’s not alone. North Korea has its own Spill Zone, and a young man named Don Jae is the only one who made it out alive. Alive, but changed. Now Addison, Don Jae, and, curiously, a rag doll named Vespertine, share an unholy bond and uncanny powers.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Arranged marriage
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Explosions
  • Gun violence
  • Nuclear accident
  • Animal death & dead bodies
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com