Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.
Ginevra: A masked man killed my fiancé, so I offered him anything in exchange for my life. He demanded my mouth, but he’s taken my body… and my soul. At night, he comes to my room to degrade and humiliate me for fun. When he murders my date, I turn to the only person strong enough to defeat my stalker. My ex-fiancé, Benito—the man I ruthlessly dumped for another guy. He’ll help, but only if I marry him and agree to his controlling demands. Benito: I’ve despised her since she left me for a bitter enemy. When I shot her fiancé, I also wanted to erase her from the earth. Then she made me an offer that was hard to resist. I got one… Read more.
In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt’s mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next….
Homophobia & internalised homophobia, including slurs
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (‘shell shock’) & psychological trauma from war, including survivor’s guilt, nightmares, depression, and panic attacks
Suicidal ideation & self-sacrifice (in battle)
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Minor drug use (i.e. morphine in a medical context)
Starvation
Blood, gore, and injury descriptions, including hospitalisation in military facilities, amputations, graphic descriptions of bodies, and general medical treatment and illness from battlefield wounds & injuries
Graphic depictions of World War Two, including trench warfare, combat violence, gas attacks (mustard gas), and battle scenes
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the…. Read more.
Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world. But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens… Read more.
Two rival conquerors have divided the Peninsula of the Palm. As the provinces in the peninsula were falling one by one, the sorcerer Brandin made a fateful decision, sending his beloved son to capture the last one. But when that son is killed on the battlefield, Brandin, blinded by grief, avenges his death by ruthlessly vanquishing the resistance and then cursing the people of this province with a dark sorcery–so that the very name of their home cannot be spoken or remembered. Years after that devastation, a handful of… Read more.
I’m not supposed to feel this way… I never wanted to disappear more than while around my family. Briar Lane, the girl only useful for one thing: my surname. A business handshake and pawn to be traded. My father’s chess piece shuffled between empires. That was my life back in L.A. but all it took was finding the dirty secret stuffed in a jacket pocket, and my entire world unraveled. So, I fled to the one place I knew they could never find me. Crimson Ridge. Arriving in this snowy, harsh world, I thought I’d be starting over on my own, but it turns out I couldn’t have been… Read more.
He’s mine… don’t ever forget that. Milo lives in the barn, a cowboy through and through. I live in a castle, but I’m not a princess. When the only person who loves me dies, Milo’s there. As I get older, I no longer look at Milo like a big brother. I look at him like the man God made just for me. With the first glimpse of freedom from my pathetic excuse for a father, I imagine a future with Milo. I dream of the day when we won’t have to hide our feelings. But Milo has a secret. He is not free. The man I love is marrying the woman I hate…
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies… especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade… Read more.
I’m a golden boy. A genius law student, the heir to the Carson empire, and the dutiful son. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like from the outside. Deep inside, I have the urge to set the world on fire. I keep these impulses in check, rarely indulging in mayhem. Until one night of debauchery backfires, and I’m caught by a villain. I bury the entire ordeal with the rest of my skeletons. That is, until that night walks into my classroom in the form of my new professor. Kayden Lockwood. A criminal who’s teaching criminal law. I can’t expose what he’s done without unmasking my secret life. What I can do, however, is force him to taste the poison… Read more.
Rape (protagonist) including dubious consent scenarios, consensual non-consent (cnc), mentions of the protagonist’s wife being gang-raped and murdered, and mentions of the rape of the protagonist’s high school girlfriend by her father
Intimate partner abuse including one partner shooting the other with an arrow (twice)
Trigger Warning Database 