Magic Study by Maria V Snyder

Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder

Yelena is a survivor. Kidnapped as a child, held prisoner as a teen, then released to act as a poison taster, she is now a student of magic. But these magic skills place her in imminent danger, and with an execution order on her head, she has no choice but to escape to Sitia, the land of her birth.

But nothing in Sitia is familiar. As she struggles to understand where she belongs and how to control her powers, a rogue magician emerges – and Yelena catches his eye. Suddenly she is embroiled in a situation not of her making. And once again her magical abilities will either save her life… or be her downfall.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape recounted
  • Sexual assault
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Torture
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Poison Study by Maria V Snyder

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia. And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misgendering
  • Rape & attempted rape recounted
  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Torture
  • Poisoning (theme)
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Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Growing up in the Cinzio Traveling Players circus, Genevieve Flannery is accustomed to a life most teenagers could never imagine. Her mother Delia’s ghostly hallucinations never seemed all that strange . . . until the evening Geni and her mother are performing an aerial routine they’ve done hundreds of times, and Delia falls to her death.

That night, a dark curtain in Geni’s life opens. Everything has changed. As they reel from the tragedy, the Cinzio Traveling Players are also grappling with the circus’s new owner: a generous, mysterious man whose connection to the circus—Geni suspects—has a dark history. And suddenly, Geni is stumbling into a new reality of her own, her life interrupted daily by the terrors only Delia used to see.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language,
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Graphic physical injuries
  • Death of a mother
  • Murder
  • Torture mentioned
  • Car accident
  • Imprisonment
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal cruelty
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Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance.

Despite her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Physical injury & illness, including hypothermia
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Murder
  • Near-drowning
  • Animal death & hunting
  • Animal injury
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A Curse of Ash and Embers by Jo Spurrier

A Curse of Ash & Embers by Jo Spurrier

Some people knit socks by the fire at night. Gyssha Blackbone made monsters. But the old witch is dead now, and somehow it’s Elodie’s job to clean up the mess. When she was hired at Black Oak Cottage, Elodie had no idea she’d find herself working for a witch; and her acid-tongued new mistress, Aleida, was not expecting a housemaid to turn up on her doorstep.

Gyssha’s final curse left Aleida practically dead on her feet, and now, with huge monsters roaming the woods, a demonic tree lurking in the orchard and an angry warlock demanding repayment of a debt, Aleida needs Elodie’s help, whether she likes it or not. And no matter what the old witch throws at her, to Elodie it’s still better than going back home.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Graphic verbal & emotional child abuse
  • Physical child abuse mentioned
  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Misogyny
  • Dissociation
  • Suicide
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injuries
  • Emesis
  • Death of a father
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Death of a friend recounted
  • Murder mentioned
  • Kidnapping mentioned
  • Strangulation
  • Poisoning
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
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The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn’t right at the Sun Down, and before long she’s determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden… 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape mentioned
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking
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Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

Powerful shipping magnate Evelyn Perdanu lives a tight, contained life, holding herself at a distance from all who would get close to her. Her family is dead, her country is dying, and when something foul comes to the city of Delphinium, the brittle, perilous existence she’s built for herself is strained to breaking.

When one of her ships arrives in dock, she counts herself lucky that it made it through the military blockades slowly strangling her city. But one by one, the crew fall ill with a mysterious sickness: an intense light in their eyes and obsessive behavior, followed by a catatonic stupor… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Plague
  • Drug abuse
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • Poisoning
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Stallo by Stefan Spjut

Stallo by Stefan Spjut

In the summer of 1978, a young boy disappears without trace from a cabin in the Dalecarlian woods of Sweden. His mother claims he was abducted by a giant.

The previous year, in the Sarek National Park, Laponia, a wildlife photographer takes a strange picture from his small airplane, of a bear running over the marshes. On its back sits a creature. It looks like a small monkey, but the photographer claims he has taken his first picture of a troll… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
  • Animal death
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Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Also known as Murder is Bad Manners.

1934. When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong set up a secret detective agency at Deepdean School for Girls, they struggle to find a truly exciting mystery to investigate. (Unless you count the case of Lavinia’s missing tie. Which they don’t.)

But then Hazel discovers the body of the Science Mistress, Miss Bell – but when she and Daisy return five minutes later, the body has disappeared. Now the girls have to solve a murder, and prove a murder has happened in the first place before the killer strikes again (and before the police can get there first, naturally), but will they succeed?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Blood depiction
  • Graphic dead bodies
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Bullying
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Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family — and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking
  • Car accident
  • Bullying
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