The Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen

The Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen

Five years ago, Michael Graham betrayed the only person who ever really knew him. Since then, he’s made an art of hiding his sexuality from everyone. Including himself.

So it’s a shock when his past strolls right into the Harkness College locker room, sporting a bag of hockey gear and the same slow smile that had always rendered Graham defenceless. For Graham, there is only one possible reaction: total, debilitating panic. With one loose word, the team’s new left-wing could… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Hate crimes
  • Disownment
  • Hospitalisation
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Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju 

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju

Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town.

Macho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be—one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Misgendering
  • Parental abandonment
  • Domestic violence
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Emesis
  • Bullying
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The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

Albert Entwistle was a postman. It was one of the few things everyone knew about him. And it was one of the few things he was comfortable with people knowing.

64-year-old Albert Entwistle has been a postie in a quiet town in Northern England for all his life, living alone since the death of his mam 18 years ago. He keeps himself to himself. He always has. But he’s just learned he’ll be forced to retire at his next birthday. With no friends and nothing to look forward to, the lonely future he faces terrifies him. He realises it’s… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Racism
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Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum

Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum

What secrets will people keep—or reveal—to protect those they love? This novel, set against the frightening backdrop of an encroaching fire season, sparks reflection about friendship, the allure of romantic love, and loyalty to family. Can a single kiss change everything?

It was a year on fire. They fell in love. Someone was bound to get burned… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Coming out themes
  • Self-harm mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Arson
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This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke

This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke

This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke

In the middle of Budapest, there is a river. Csilla knows the river is magic. During WWII, the river kept her family safe when they needed it most–safe from the Holocaust. But that was before the Communists seized power. Before her parents were murdered by the Soviet police. Before Csilla knew things about her father’s legacy that she wishes she could forget.

Now Csilla keeps her head down, planning her… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Homomisia
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Police brutality
  • Gun violence
  • The Holocaust
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Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind.

Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slavery mentioned
  • Homomisia mentioned
  • Abandonment
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Emotional & physical abuse
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Drug use
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Beheading
  • Forced blinding
  • Scarring
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child
  • Mass murder
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
  • Physical assault
  • Imprisonment
  • Cult
  • Animal death
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Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby 

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed his father his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Deadnaming
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
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Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby 

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

Beauregard “Bug” Montage: husband, father, honest car mechanic. But he was once known – from North Carolina to the beaches of Florida – as the best getaway driver on the East Coast. Just like his father, who disappeared many years ago. After a series of financial calamities, Bug reluctantly takes part in a daring diamond heist to solve his money troubles – and to go straight once and for all. However, when it goes horrifically wrong, he’s sucked into a grimy underworld which threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear . . .

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Misogyny
  • Racism
  • Fatmisia
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Hate crime
  • Emotional & physical child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Emesis
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Car accident
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Suggested Reading by David Connis

Suggested Reading by David Connis

Clara Evans is horrified when she discovers her principal’s “prohibited media” hit list. The iconic books on the list have been pulled from the library and aren’t allowed anywhere on the school’s premises. Students caught with the contraband will be sternly punished.

Many of these stories have changed Clara’s life, so she’s not going to sit back and watch while her draconian principal abuses his power… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Attempted suicide
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The Binding by Bridget Collins 

The Binding by Bridget Collins

Books are dangerous things in Collins’s alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It’s a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them.

After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Rape & rape of a minor
  • Incest mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Animal cruelty
  • Animal death
  • Fire
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