This Vast Land by Stephen E Ambrose

This Vast Land by Stephen E. Ambrose

In a story muscled with truth and imagination, Stephen E. Ambrose recounts the epoch-making 1803 expedition of Lewis and Clark through the words of a young man. Finding foes and friends among Native Americans, surviving sickness and hunger, choosing between a woman and the life he left behind, George Shannon grows up as the corps forges a way west. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, Ambrose creates the fictional diary of nineteen-year-old George Shannon, who was in fact the youngest member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. He conjures the journey west with stunning clarity, calling on the bravery of Daniel Boone, the pragmatic courage of Sacajawea, the overarching, relentless vision of Meriwether Lewis.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking
  • Murder
  • Scalping
  • War themes
  • Animal death
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Jackdaw Summer by David Almond

Jackdaw Summer by David Almond

Also known as Raven Summer.

Daisy, Esther, and Susan’s last year at university is getting a bumpy start, with everything strange after Ed’s declaration of love followed by grievous injury, Daisy with nowhere to live, and McGraw and Susan at odds over their new flat!

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Burn scars
  • Death of a child recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • House fire recounted
  • Animal death
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The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett and Amelia Grace are forced to spend In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Pregnancy from rape
  • Graphic abortion
  • Autopsy
  • Decapitation
  • Death of a sister
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Car accident
  • Imprisonment
  • Earthquake
  • Death of a pet
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Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander & James Patterson and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius’ family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Hate crimes
  • Bullying
  • Mentions of the lynching of Emmett Till
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In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson

In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson

Ava’s life is the kind other people envy: loving husband; great kids; beautiful house. Until the night that a violent home invasion plunges her world into chaos.

In the aftermath of the attack, Ava needs answers to two questions. Who has targeted her family? And why? Things aren’t adding up. She is starting to suspect that someone knows more than they are letting on. That everything she thought she knew about the people closest to her was a lie.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Home invasion
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Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever.

After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust—her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organization called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them.

In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realizes that she is not alone—there are others out there just like her—people with special powers—and her mother’s killer is one of them…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a mother
  • Murder
  • Mugging recounted
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Out of Control by Sarah Alderson

Out of Control by Sarah Alderson

When 17 year old Liva witnesses a brutal murder she’s taken into police custody for her own protection. But when the police station is attacked and bullets start flying it becomes clear that Liva is not just a witness, she’s a target.

Together with a car thief called Jay, Liva manages to escape the massacre but now the two of them are alone in New York, trying to outrun and outwit two killers who will stop at nothing to find them.

When you live on the edge, there’s a long way to fall.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Murder
  • Gun violence
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The Sound by Sarah Alderson

The Sound by Sarah Alderson

When aspiring music journalist Ren Kingston takes a job nannying for a wealthy family on the exclusive island of Nantucket, playground for Boston’s elite, she’s hoping for a low-key summer reading books and blogging about bands. Boys are firmly off the agenda.

What she doesn’t count on is falling in with a bunch of party-loving private school kids who are hiding some dark secrets, falling (possibly) in love with the local bad boy, and falling out with a dangerous serial killer…

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut shaming
  • Murder
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Bottling It by AA Albright

Bottling It by A.A. Albright

Wanda Wayfair is a bit of a late starter. At almost twenty-one she still hasn’t received her magical powers, and she’s running out of time. But that doesn’t bother Wanda. Much. Not when she can spend all of her time in the human world and pretend that her coven doesn’t exist. But when Wanda takes a job at Berrys’ Bottlers, working with the handsome Will Berry and his unpleasant Aunt Alice, she soon realises that she’s a lot closer to the magical world than she thought.

All over Dublin, humans are murdering witches. When asked why, all they’ll say is, ‘I dunno why I done it.’ But Wanda thinks she does know why they’ve done it – and hopefully she’ll receive her power in time to help her coven discover the truth.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
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Tales From the Hinterland by Melissa Albert

Tales From the Hinterland by Melissa Albert

Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice―and still lives.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Forced & coerced marriage
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Self-injury
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies & body parts
  • Body horror
  • Surgical removal of a tongue
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Knife violence
  • Strangulation
  • Hanging
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