Tag Archives: Knife, Sword & Axe Violence

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of knife, sword, and axe, and weapon violence and stabbing.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more. But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Murder of a father, mother & sister by stabbing
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Car accident mentioned (hit-and-run)
  • Bullying

Age of Deception by Patricia Vanasse

Agreeing to accompany her father’s people back to their homeworld, Kira Forrest prepares for the fight of her life. She’s agreed to undertake the Trial of the Broken, a rite of passage every member of her father’s House must pass. It offers a path to independence and freedom that is too tempting to deny. Not everyone welcomes this lost daughter of Roake. There are those who fear what her presence might bring to light. Betrayal stalks the halls of Kira’s birthplace—its roots embedded deep in the events that claimed her parent’s lives and set her on her current path… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Drugging
  • Blood and gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of parent mentioned
  • Torture
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • War themes and military violence

The Adventurer’s Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White

Anne has spent most of her thirteen years dreaming of the day she and her best friend Penelope will finally leave Saint Lupin’s Institute for Perpetually Wicked and Hideously Unattractive Children. When the big day arrives, a series of very curious happenings lead to Anne being charged with an epic quest. Anne, Penelope, and new questing partner Hiro have only days to travel to strange new locales, solve myriad riddles, and triumph over monstrous foes–or face the horrible consequences.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical injury, including an almost amputated arm
  • Sword violence & stabbing
  • Explosion
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Death from a fall
  • Animal attack

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquillity is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & ableism, including mentions of police brutality
  • Physical child abuse by alcoholic parent(secondary character)
  • Dieting mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Parental infertility mentioned (secondary character)
  • Physical injury & mentions of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Death of a father from a heart attack mentioned (secondary character)
  • Death of a sister in a mountaineering accident recounted
  • Murder
  • Mugging with knife (secondary character)
  • Phyiscal assault
  • Incarceration for the murder of a stepfather in self-defence (secondary character)
  • Homelessness mentioned
  • Bushfires mentioned

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston’s disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors – tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother’s stories with stories of her own, engaging her family’s past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Cheating
  • Suicide by drowning
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Sword violence
  • Animal death

Fall of the School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

What rises . . . must fall. Two brothers One Good. One Evil. In exchange for power and immortality, they watch over the Endless Woods and rule the School for Good and Evil. Yet all School Masters must face a test. Theirs is loyalty. But what happens when loyalty is corrupted? When the bonds of blood are broken? Who will survive? Who will die? And what will become of the school and its students? The journey that started a hundred years ago throttles towards its end.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Smoking
  • Blood depiction & mentions of blood-drinking
  • Death of children mentioned
  • Torture by waterboarding/drowning
  • Physical assault & fantasy violence

Rise of the School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical assault & fantasy violence

Parsnips in Love by Porochista Khakpour

An ailing farmer in rural Iran unearths an extraordinary find: two parsnips, grown together and looking for all the world like entwined lovers. For now, the sublime treasure is his secret. Wrapping it in a silk handkerchief, he nestles it away in a dresser drawer. Day after day, he gazes at their unmistakable rapture, reminded of the long-gone youthful passions he once shared with his wife. So, too, he mourns the inevitable—the eventual decay of the parsnips in love. When he decides to share his discovery with the world, his life and the lives of those around him connect and change in the most unexpected ways.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder
  • Knife & gun violence

We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado

Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove. However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Associ… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & homophobia
  • Child abuse & neglect, including mentions of a parent slashing her child with a knife after they came out
  • Anxiety & alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & gore depiction, including minor body horror & depiction of dead bodies
  • Car accident
  • Fire

The Traitor Spy by Marion Blackwood

The elven Court of Stone has many spies, and Kenna is one of its most prized ones. Being a half-elf, she is skilled, dangerous, and beautiful. She’s also a traitor. Desperately yearning for freedom, she blackmails people for ransom behind the back of the elven prince who holds her leash. But one day, she takes it too far. When she accidentally goes after someone from a neighboring court, she is cornered by its prince. The feared Prince of Shadows gives her an ultimatum: spy for him on her own court or her master will learn of her illegal activities. At the same time, a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism & slut-shaming
  • Indentured servitude
  • Estrangement
  • Alcohol consumption & gambling
  • Blood & injury depiction, including dead bodies
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder, including attempted regicide
  • Knife violence
  • Strangulation
  • Physical assault (mugging)
  • Captivity & confinement
  • Home invasion
  • Hostage situation
  • Blackmail
  • Conscription
  • Poverty themes