Human & Sex Trafficking – Page 12 – Trigger Warning Database

Lord of Secrets by Breanna Teintze

Lord of Secrets by Breanna Teintze

Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray has enough problems. He’s friendless, penniless and on the run from the tyrannical Mages’ Guild – and with the search for his imprisoned grandfather looking hopeless, his situation can’t get much worse.

So when a fugitive drops into his lap – literally – and gets them both arrested, it’s the last straw – until Gray realises that runaway slave Brix could be the key to his grandfather’s release. All he has to do is break out of prison, break into an ancient underground temple and avoid killing himself with his own magic in the process.

In theory, it’s simple enough. But as secrets unfold and loyalties shift, Gray discovers something with the power to change the nature of life and death itself. Now Gray must find a way to protect the people he loves, but it could cost him everything, even his soul . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery & human trafficking
Physical child abuse recounted
Sexual harassment
Nonconsensual drugging
Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
Cannibalism mentioned
Emesis
Murder & attempted murder
Graphic physical & psychological torture (on-page)
Imprisonment

Traffick by Ellen Hopkins

Traffick by Ellen Hopkins

In Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five characters tackling these enormous questions: Eden, the preacher’s daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze; Ginger, who runs away from home with her girlfriend and is arrested for soliciting an undercover cop; and Cody, whose gambling habit forces him into the life, but who is shot and left for dead.

And now, in Traffick, these five are faced with the toughest question of all: Is there a way out?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Disownment
Sexual assault
Sex trafficking
Forced sex work
Substance addiction
Gambling addiction
Gun violence

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Ship of Smoke & Steel by Django Wexler

In the lower wards of Kahnzoka, the great port city of the Blessed Empire, eighteen-year-old ward boss Isoka comes to collect when there’s money owing. When her ability to access the Well of Combat is discovered by the Empire—an ability she should have declared and placed at His Imperial Majesty’s service—she’s sent on an impossible mission: steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship—a ship from which no one has ever returned. If she fails, her sister’s life is forfeit.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist slurs
Homomisia
Child abuse
Sex trafficking
Blood & gore depiction

Providence by Caroline Kepnes

Providence by Caroline Kepnes

rowing up as best friends in small-town New Hampshire, Jon and Chloe are the only ones who truly understand each other, though they can never find the words to tell one another the depth of their feelings. When Jon is finally ready to confess his feelings, he’s suddenly kidnapped by his substitute teacher who is obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and has a plot to save humanity.

Mourning the disappearance of Jon and facing the reality he may never return, Chloe tries to navigate the rites of entering young adulthood and “fit in” with the popular crowd, but thoughts of Jon are never far away… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language (r slur)
Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Intimate partner abuse
Medical experimentation
Comas
Cancer
Heart attack
Nonconsensual drugging
Kidnapping
Human trafficking mentioned
Animal death

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece, bound by blood and oath, must lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery & human trafficking
Rape
Child abuse & neglect
Self harm
Blood & gore depiction
Physical injuries
Murder
Torture
Kidnapping
Animal death
War themes & military violence

Ferocious by Paula Stokes

Ferocious by Paula Stokes

When Winter Kim finds out that her sister is dead and that she has a brother she never knew about, only two things matter―finding what’s left of her family and killing the man who destroyed her life. Her mission leads her from St. Louis to Los Angeles back to South Korea, where she grew up.

Things get increasingly dangerous once Winter arrives in Seoul. Aided by her friends Jesse and Sebastian, Winter attempts to infiltrate an international corporation to get close to her target, a nefarious businessman named Kyung. But keeping her last remaining loved ones out of the line of fire proves difficult, and when all seems to be lost, Winter must face one last devastating decision: is revenge worth sacrificing everything for? Or can she find a spark of hope in the darkness that threatens to engulf her?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual assault mentioned
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a sister
Murder
Torture

Vicarious by Paula Stokes

Vicarious by Paula Stokes

Winter Kim and her sister, Rose, work as high-tech stunt girls for Rose’s ex-boyfriend, Gideon, engaging in dangerous and enticing activities while recording their neural impulses for his Vicarious Sensory Experiences, or ViSEs. Whether it’s bungee jumping, shark diving, or grinding up against celebrities at the city’s hottest dance clubs, Gideon can make it happen for you—for a price.

When Rose disappears and a ViSE recording of her murder is delivered to Gideon, Winter is devastated. She won’t rest until she finds her sister’s killer. But when the clues she uncovers conflict with the digital recordings her sister made, Winter isn’t sure what to believe. To find out what happened to Rose, she’ll have to untangle what’s real from what only seems real, risking her life in the process.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Self-harm recounted
Suicidal ideation
Sexual assault & sex trafficking mentioned

Hazel and Gray by Nic Stone

Hazel and Gray by Nic Stone

Two anxious young lovers lost in the woods. A beckoning mansion in a dark clearing.

It’s bad enough that Hazel and Gray have defied the demands of Hazel’s foul stepfather. The Monster has forbidden their romance. Now they’ve awakened in the forest, phones dead, hours past curfew. But not far away is a grand estate in the middle of nowhere. The door is open. In this short story about choosing your own path, the fury of the Monster that awaits them back home may be nothing compared to what lies ahead.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Human trafficking
Forced sex work
Nonconsensual drugging
Paedophilia
Murder (implied)

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.

Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Human trafficking
Physical parental abuse
Child sexual abuse mentioned
Amnesia (memory loss)
Blood & gore depiction
Body horror
Medical experimentation
Death of a child
Death of a brother
Death of a mother & father
Death of a wife
Murder & attempted murder
Physical assault
Imprisonment
Drowning
Earthquakes
Disappearance of a loved one
Child homelessness & poverty recounted
Rebellion themes & regicide
Animal attack
Animal injury & illness
Animal abuse

The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

The Mermaid, the Witch & the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Aboard the pirate ship Dove, Flora the girl takes on the identity of Florian the man to earn the respect and protection of the crew. For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don’t trust, don’t stick out, and don’t feel. But on this voyage, as the pirates prepare to sell their unsuspecting passengers into slavery, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is en route to a dreaded arranged marriage with her own casket in tow. Flora doesn’t expect to be taken under Evelyn’s wing, and Evelyn doesn’t expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian.

Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood, which causes men to have visions and lose memories) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, and the all-encompassing Sea itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia
Slavery & human trafficking
Misogyny
Rape & sexual assault mentioned
Child abuse & neglect
Forced arranged marriage
Alcoholism & alcohol abuse
Starvation
Blood depiction & physical injury
Emesis
Murder
Graphic torture (on-page)
Whipping
Hanging mentioned
Imprisonment
Poverty themes
Homelessness
War & colonialism themes
Animal abuse & death