Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

For She Is Wrath by Emily Varga

Three hundred and sixty-four days. Framed for a crime she didn’t commit, Dania counts down her days in prison until she can exact revenge on Mazin, the boy responsible for her downfall, the boy she once loved—and still can’t forget. When she discovers a fellow prisoner may have the key to exacting that vengeance–a stolen djinn treasure–they execute a daring escape together and search for the hidden treasure. Armed with dark magic and a new identity, Dania enacts a plan to bring down those who betrayed her and her family, even though Mazin stands in her way. But seeking revenge becomes a complicated game of.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abusing and addiction to a magical substance (on-page & discussion)
  • Physical injury (protagonist)
  • Murder of a father
  • Murder by sword violence & fire
  • Torture during imprisonment by physical beating
  • Kidnapping mentioned

Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine

Most people’s births aren’t immortalized in a police report—but Olivia was born during the infamous Camp Lost Lake murders. Seventeen years later, Olivia’s life looks pretty perfect . . . until she discovers the man she calls dad is not her biological father. Now she wants answers about her bloodline, and the only place she knows to look is Camp Lost Lake. Most people’s births aren’t immortalized in a police report—but Olivia was born during the infamous Camp Lost Lake murders. Seventeen years later, Olivia’s life looks pretty perfect . . . until she discovers the man she calls dad is not her biological father. Now she wants answers… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Childbirth mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Mass murder discussed
  • Death of a friend

A War of Swallowed Stars by Sangu Mandanna

A prince without his kingdom. A kingdom without its princess. The destruction of the stars themselves. War is destroying the galaxy. Esmae has vanished without a trace. A terrifying, ravenous beast is devouring the stars one by one. Titania is offered a gift that may well be a curse. Alexi, the exiled prince, is asked to pay a heavy price for his mistakes. And far, far away, on a dark, mysterious planet, a sleeping god stirs awake. War or family. Pride or peace. As the end of the world draws ever closer, Esmae and Alexi must decide how far they’ll go to win—and who they’ll sacrifice along the way.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic blood & injury depiction & needles
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother & son
  • Death of a friend recounted
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Attempted infanticide recounted
  • Knife & sword violence
  • Poisoning recounted
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Fire recounted
  • War & battle scenes (theme)

A Spark of White Fire by Sangu Mandanna

Raised alone and far away from her home on Kali, Esmae longs to return to her family. When the King of Wychstar offers to gift the unbeatable, sentient warship Titania to a warrior that can win his competition, she sees her way home: she’ll enter the competition, reveal her true identity to the world, and help her famous brother win back the crown of Kali. It’s a great plan. Until it falls apart.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Parental abandonment
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Infanticide mentioned
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife & sword violence
  • Fire recounted
  • War, rebellion & royal coup (theme)

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers. It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny, racism & classism
  • Alcohol consumption & alcoholism
  • Murder & torture
  • Kidnapping, rape & abuse of multiple women discussed
  • Cults

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible. Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction & emesis
  • Murder
  • Smoking
  • Animal & human medical experimentation

Where’s Molly by H.D. Carlton

In my dreams, I never escaped the Oregon woods. Life after death isn’t easy to accept, especially when I still feel like a ghost. Now, I live deep in the mountains of Montana—the paradigm of beauty. But they are also the home of horrors. Horrors that I only unleash at night. When my pigs are allowed to feast.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect including child sexual assault and rape recounted (off-page)
  • Human trafficking
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Drug use & alcohol consumption
  • Murder

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & homophobia
  • Domestic violence and abuse
  • Postpartum depression
  • Murder

Quicksilver by Callie Hart

Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate. In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water. Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember. But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone. When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape of the protagonist’s mother & sex work mentioned
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Forced sterilization recounted
  • Blood, injury & gore depiction including decapitation & emesis
  • Murder & torture
  • War themes
  • Extreme childhood poverty recounted

One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction and emesis
  • Murder by poisoning
  • Hurricane (on-page)
  • Drowning