Mafia King by CD Reiss

Mafia King by C.D. Reiss

Santino is my king. My lover. My husband. He’s the head of the Cavallo crime family and the moment he choked my vows from me, my life was bound to his. I’m done fighting my fate, until I hear two rumours, and I’m shaken to the core. One rumor about the past—that I wasn’t the first bride Santino took. Another about the future—a new bride is about to be taken. Changing the old ways is like dousing the flames of hell with tears. But I married the devil himself, and when I vowed to obey, I lied.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Smoking
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Organised crime (mafia)
  • Kidnapping

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job in the affluent suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy. Mallory immediately loves this new job. She lives in the Maxwell’s pool house, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body. As the days pass… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Transmisia
  • Substance addiction recovery
  • Kidnapping of a child

When Stars Come Out by Scarlett St Clair

When Stars Come Out by Scarlett St. Clair

Anora Silby can see the dead and turn spirits into gold coins, two things she would prefer to keep secret as she tries to lead a normal life at her new school. After all, she didn’t change her identity for nothing. Hiding her weirdness is just one of many challenges. By the end of her first day, she’s claimed the soul of a dead girl on campus and lost the coin. Turns out, the coin gives others the ability to steal souls, and when a classmate ends up dead, there’s no mistaking the murder weapon. Navigating the loss of her Poppa, the mistrust of her mother, and Roundtable, an anonymous… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Animal death

Bite-Sized Magic by Kathryn Littlewood

Bite-Sized Magic by Kathryn Littlewood

Rose won back her family’s magical Cookery Booke in an international baking competition in A Dash of Magic, the second novel in the series. Rose is now world famous—so famous, in fact, that Mr Butter, head of the Mostess Corporation, has kidnapped her so that she can develop new and improved magical recipes for his company’s snack cakes. With the magically enhanced Dinkies and Moony Pies, Mr Butter plans to take over the world. Together with her brothers, their talking cat and mouse, and an unlikely team of bakers, Rose must overthrow Mr Butter before he destroys civilization, one magically evil snack cake at a time…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Kidnapping & captivity

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape, martial rape & rape by coercion
  • Paedophilia
  • Bestiality
  • Necrophilia
  • Blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping

Valiant Ladies by Melissa Grey

Valiant Ladies by Melissa Grey

By day Eustaquia “Kiki” de Sonza and Ana Lezama de Urinza are proper young seventeeth century ladies. But when night falls, they trade in their silks and lace for swords and muskets, venturing out into the vibrant, bustling, crime-ridden streets of Potosí, in the Spanish Empire’s Viceroyalty of Peru. They pass their time fighting, gambling, and falling desperately in love with one another. Then, on the night Kiki’s engagement to the Viceroy’s son is announced, her older brother―heir to her family’s fortune―is murdered. The girls immediately embark on a whirlwind… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Lesbomisia
  • Misogyny
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction including body horror
  • Death of parents
  • Murder
  • Explosion
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping

Ruthless People by J.J. McAvoy

Ruthless People by J.J. McAvoy

To the outside world, they look like American royalty, giving to charities, feeding the homeless, and rebuilding the city. But behind closed doors is a constant battle for dominance between two bosses, cultures, and hearts. Ruthless People is a romantic crime fiction set in modern day Chicago and follows the life and marriage of Melody Giovanni and Liam Callahan – rivals by blood and leaders through fear. Theirs is an arranged marriage with the goal of ending years of bloodshed between the Irish and the Italians. Liam assumes he’s getting a simple-minded wife, one he can… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Arranged marriage
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Neglect & abandonment
  • Nyctophobia
  • Substance addiction
  • Drugging
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Hospitalisation
  • Needles mentioned
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Plane crash

I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan

I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan

In her small town, seventeen-year-old Delia “Dee” Skinner is known as the girl who wasn’t taken. Ten years ago she witnessed the abduction of her best friend, Sibby. And though she told the police everything she remembered, it wasn’t enough. Sibby was never seen again. At night, Dee deals with her guilt by becoming someone else: the Seeker, the voice behind the popular true crime podcast Radio Silent, which features missing persons cases and works with online sleuths to solve them. Nobody knows Dee’s the Seeker, and she plans to keep it that way.. When another… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Pedophilia & grooming, implied
  • Recreational drug use
  • Disappearance of a loved
  • Kidnapping of a child
  • Bullying

Falling Embers by Catherine Cowles

Falling Embers by Catherine Cowles

I loved Calder Cruz from the moment he taught me to fly. He might’ve been my brother’s best friend but he was my everything. The only who understood me. My safest place. My person. Until one night changed it all and we became strangers in a single breath. Now, years later, I see him every day at the fire station. I watch him raise adorable twin girls as a single dad. But he has no idea how hard it was to see him move on without me. How much I still burn for him. A twist of fate changes everything. When my life is on the line… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Car accident
  • Fire
  • Cyberbullying & doxxing

The Reaper by RuNyx

The Reaper by RuNyx

Tristan ‘The Predator’ Caine had been unprepared for Morana Vitalio. After spending his entire life with a vow he broke on a rainy night, he finds himself torn in a battle between his painful past and an uncertain future. The only thing he knows? Her life still belongs to him. For Morana, the line between enemies and allies has blurred. Everything she once held dear to her has disintegrated and the unknown gapes at her, leaving her with both her freedom and life on the line in enemy territory. The only thing she knows? His life has always belonged to her. With twenty years of… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Rape recounted
  • Panic attack
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent, on- & off-page
  • Death of a sibling mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder, including the murder of children
  • Torture mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Explosion
  • Kidnapping mentioned