Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of murder and attempted murder.

See also Genocide and mass murder, and War themes & military violence.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misgendering
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Plague
  • Nonconsensual castration recounted
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Starvation
  • Cannibalism mentioned
  • Death of children
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Torture, off-page
  • Bombings
  • War themes
  • Animal injury
  • Animal death

King of Wrath by Ana Huang

Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant. Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally. The billionaire CEO never planned to marry—until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows. Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He’ll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal. There’s only one problem: now that he has her…he can’t bring himself to let her go… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & neglect
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Gambling
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Blackmail
  • Car accident mentioned

If We Were Villains by ML Rio

Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago. As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Slut-shaming
  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Suicide
  • Drug use
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Overdose
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder

Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko

For the first time, an Empress Redemptor sits on Aritsar’s throne. To appease the sinister spirits of the dead, Tarisai must now anoint a council of her own, coming into her full power as a Raybearer. She must then descend into the Underworld, a sacrifice to end all future atrocities. Tarisai is determined to survive. Or at least, that’s what she tells her increasingly distant circle of friends. Months into her shaky reign as empress, child spirits haunt her, demanding that she pay for past sins of the empire. With the lives of her loved ones on the line assassination attempts from unknown… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Child abuse & neglect recounted
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Enslavement
  • Rape
  • Parental abandonment
  • Emotional and physical child abuse & neglect
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Attempted murder
  • Regicide
  • Fire

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt’s narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

Emily and Navin’s mother is still in a coma from the arachnopod’s poison, and there’s only one place to find help: Kanalis, the bustling, beautiful city of waterfalls. But when Em, her brother, and Miskit and the rest of the robotic crew aboard the walking house reach the city, they quickly realize that seeking help is looking for trouble…dangerous trouble.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & physical injury depiction
  • Coma
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Attempted murder
  • Explosion
  • Physical assault
  • Fire

The Change by Kristen Miller

After Nessa James’s husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she’s left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead—a gift she’s inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities. On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn’t left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Rape mentioned
  • Sexual assault
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Divorce
  • Eating disorder
  • Suicide
  • Murder

Descent by Sam Mariano

Calvin will do anything for me… except let me go. We were strangers, as far as I knew. He saw me once, but didn’t introduce himself like he could have. Calvin Cutler. Nice to meet you. But there’s nothing nice about Calvin Cutler. He’s ruthless and single-minded, and he zeroed in on me—a hapless target for his dark and twisted appetites. In the depths of Hell, I first looked into his sinful brown eyes, felt the greedy touch of his demanding hands for the first time. Not the last time, though. He wanted more. So much more. He wanted me, whether I wanted him or not.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Dubious consent scenarios
  • Improper BDSM practices
  • Drugging
  • Involuntary pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Blackmail

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy
  • Abortion
  • Emesis
  • Car accident, off-page
  • Murder