Murder & Attempted Murder – Page 246 – Trigger Warning Database

Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers

Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers

In the kingdom of Lovero, nine rival Families of assassins lawfully kill people for a price. As a highly skilled member of one of these powerful clans, seventeen-year-old Lea Saldana has always trusted in the strength of her Family. Until she awakens to find them murdered and her home in flames. The Da Vias, the Saldanas’ biggest enemy, must be responsible—and Lea should have seen it coming. But her secret relationship with the Da Vias’ son, Val, has clouded her otherwise killer instinct—and given the Da Vias more reason than ever to take her Family down.

Racked with guilt and shattered over Val’s probable betrayal, Lea sets out to even the score, with her heart set on retaliation and only one thought clear in her mind: make the Da Vias pay.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Murder, including mass murder

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa

The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa book cover

The narrator of this novel is a rather charming lizard. He lives on Felix Ventura’s living-room wall, Felix, the lizard’s friend and hero of the story, is a man who sells pasts – if you don’t like yours, he can come up with an new one for you, a new past – full of better memories, with a complete lineage, photos and all.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Murder and torture

His Hideous Heart edited by Dahlia Adler

His Hideous Heart edited by Dahlia Adler

Thirteen of YA’s most celebrated names reimagine Edgar Allan Poe’s most surprising, unsettling, and popular tales for a new generation.

Edgar Allan Poe may be a hundred and fifty years beyond this world, but the themes of his beloved works have much in common with modern young adult fiction. Whether the stories are familiar to readers or discovered for the first time, readers will revel in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales, and how they’ve been brought to life in 13 unique and unforgettable ways.

Contributors include Kendare Blake (reimagining “Metzengerstein”), Rin Chupeco (“The Murders in the Rue Morge”), Lamar Giles (“The Oval Portrait”), Tessa Gratton (“Annabel Lee”), Tiffany D. Jackson (“The Cask of Amontillado”), Stephanie Kuehn (“The Tell-Tale Heart”), Emily Lloyd-Jones (“The Purloined Letter”), Hillary Monahan (“The Masque of the Red Death”), Marieke Nijkamp (“Hop-Frog”), Caleb Roehrig (“The Pit and the Pendulum”), and Fran Wilde (“The Fall of the House of Usher”).

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism, homomisia, misogyny and transmisia
Abusive relationship/s
Suicide
Substance abuse
Death of a partner (implied)
Murder and torture
Animal death

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo book cover

Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage–after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures–Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time–until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does–but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Cissexism
Rape mentioned
Pregnancy
Death by childbirth
Infertility themes
Terminal illness
Death of a child
Death of a parent
Murder
Police brutality

The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi

The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi

Fatima is a Hazara girl. She was raised to be obedient, to be dutiful, and to honour the traditions of her family, her village, and her religion. Samiullah is a Pashtun boy. He was raised to be a landowner, to increase his family’s power, and to defend the traditions of his tribe, his village, and his religion.

They were not meant to fall in love.

But they do.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism, slut-shaming and terrorism
Forced and arranged marriages
Child abuse and physical abuse
Physical injuries and graphic burns
Murder
Poverty themes

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abwai

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abwai

In a country ripped apart by war, Tareq lives with his big and loving family . . . until the bombs strike. His city is in ruins. His life is destroyed. And those who have survived are left to figure out their uncertain future.

In the wake of destruction, he’s threatened by Daesh fighters and witnesses a public beheading. Tareq’s family knows that to continue to stay alive, they must leave. As they travel as refugees from Syria to Turkey to Greece, facing danger at every turn, Tareq must find the resilience and courage to complete his harrowing journey.

But while this is one family’s story, it is also the timeless tale of all wars, of all tragedy, and of all strife. When you are a refugee, success is outliving your loss.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape (mentioned)
Grief depiction and death of a parent, child and sibling
Murder and bombings
Drowning
War themes

The Project by Courtney Summers

The Project by Courtney Summers

Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.

When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Abandonment
Disfigurmisia
Child abuse & neglect recounted
Emotional abuse & gaslighting
Cheating
Trauma & panic attacks
Nightmares
Hallucinations mentioned
Suicide by train, on-page
Suicidal ideation mentioned
Pregnancy & pregnancy complications, on-page
Traumatic premature childbirth, on-page
Blood depiction
Physical injuries including graphic burns, comas, broken bones and facial scars
Hospitalisation
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother & father in a car accident, off-page
Death of a guardian mentioned
Death of a sister by drowning, off-page
Death of a mother in a fire mentioned
Death of a son discussed
Murder
Torture, on-page
Disappearance of a sibling
Car accident, on- & off-page
Blackmail mentioned
Cults (theme)
Homelessness mentioned
Mentions of stalking & harassment

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.

But there are things that Melati can’t protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism, internalised ableism & ableist language
Racism & race riots (theme)
Anxiety & panic attacks
OCD & intrusive thoughts (protagonist)
Hospital
Blood & gore depiction
Emesis
Death of a mother discussed
Murder & attempted murder
Knife violence
Fire & being burned alive
Hostage situation
Displacement & homelessness

The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh

The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh

In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and—especially—to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s leader, the enigmatic Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of La Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sébastien’s guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Misogyny
Sex worker slurs
Racism & racial slurs
Colourism
Segregation discussed
Attempted rape recounted (theme)
Nightmares & flashbacks
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Blood & gore depiction
Emesis
Death of a friend
Death of a sister recounted
Death of a mother & father recounted
Murder
Torture recounted
Gun violence

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.

Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.

Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.

Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Child abuse
Suicide attempt, on-page
Suicidal ideation
Self-harm
Blood and gore depiction
Physical injuries, specifically gunshot wounds
Nonconsensual hospitalisation
Medical experiementation
Death of a mentor
Murder
Gun violence