Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Josie’s life appears to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Paedophilia & adult-minor relationships
  • Child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking mentioned

Damned If You Do by Alex Brown

Seven years ago, Cordelia Scott’s abusive father left without a word, and life has been normal ever since. The seventeen-year-old spends her days stage managing the school play (which is going great, if anyone asks), pining over her best friend, Veronica, and failing one too many pop quizzes. She’s never been sad that her father left, but she knows something is…missing. When her school guidance counsellor, Fred, reveals during a session that he’s actually a demon, she learns that something is indeed a piece of her actual soul. Why? She unwittingly made a deal with him to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Murder
  • Fire

Your Lonely Nights Are Over by Adam Sass

Dearie and Cole are inseparable, unlikeable, and (in bad luck for them) totally unbelievable. From the day they met, Dearie and Cole have been two against the world. But whenever something bad happens at Stone Grove High School, they get blamed. Why? They’re beautiful, flirtatious, dangerously clever queen bees, and they’re always ready to call out their fellow students. But they’ve never faced a bigger threat than surviving senior year, when Mr. Sandman, a famous, never-caught serial killer emerges from a long retirement—and his hunting ground is their school Queer Club… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Slut-shaming
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Attempted incest mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Depressive episode
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drugging
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident

Among the Innocent by Mary Alford

When Leah Miller’s entire Amish family was murdered ten years ago, the person believed responsible took his own life. Since then, Leah left the Amish and joined the police force. Now, after another Amish woman is found murdered with the same MO, it becomes clear that the wrong man may have been blamed for her family’s deaths.
As Leah and the new police chief, Dalton Cooper, work long hours struggling to fit the pieces together in order to catch the killer, they can’t help but grow closer. When secrets from both of their pasts begin to surface, an unexpected connection between them is revealed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape, implied
  • Recreational drug use mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder by cutting their throats with a knife
  • Gun & knife violence

Things We Do in the Dark by Jennifer Hillier

When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom—covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her—she knows she’ll be charged with murder. But as bad as this looks, it’s not what worries her the most. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it’s only a matter of time before someone from her long hidden past recognizes her and destroys the new life she’s worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Statutory rape
  • Child abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Murder

Blazewrath Games by Amparo Ortiz

Lana Torres has always preferred dragons to people. In a few weeks, sixteen countries will compete in the Blazewrath World Cup, a tournament where dragons and their riders fight for glory in a dangerous relay. Lana longs to represent her native Puerto Rico in their first ever World Cup appearance, and when Puerto Rico’s Runner—the only player without a dragon steed—is kicked off the team, she’s given the chance.

But when she discovers that a former Blazewrath superstar has teamed up with the Sire—a legendary dragon who’s cursed into human form—the safety of the Cup is jeopardized… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic & child abuse recounted
  • Alcoholism mentioned
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Fire
  • Death of a partner from cancer mentioned
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Bullying

Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud

After being swept up into the brutal Vathek court, Amani, the ordinary girl forced to serve as the half-Vathek princess’s body double, has been forced into complete isolation. The cruel but complex princess, Maram, with whom Amani had cultivated a tenuous friendship, discovered Amani’s connection to the rebellion and has forced her into silence, and if Amani crosses Maram once more, her identity – and her betrayal – will be revealed to everyone in the court.

Amani is desperate to continue helping the rebellion, to fight for her people’s freedom. But she must make a devastating decision: will she step aside, and watch her people suffer, or continue to aid them, and put herself and her family in mortal danger? Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Colonialism
  • Murder of a child, off-page
  • Kidnapping

Mirage by Somaiya Daud

In a star system dominated by the brutal Vathek empire, eighteen-year-old Amani is a dreamer. She dreams of what life was like before the occupation; she dreams of writing poetry like the old-world poems she adores; she dreams of receiving a sign from Dihya that one day, she, too, will have adventure, and travel beyond her isolated moon.
But when adventure comes for Amani, it is not what she expects: she is kidnapped by the regime and taken in secret to the royal palace, where she discovers that she is nearly identical to the cruel half-Vathek Princess Maram… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Nightmares
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury & illness
  • Medical procedures
  • Needles
  • Death of a grandfather & grandmother
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a sister
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Hostage situation
  • Fire
  • Colonialism (theme)
  • Poverty
  • Animal attack

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are Boneless Mercies – death-traders, hired to kill quickly, quietly and mercifully. It is a job for women, and women only. Men will not do this sad, dark work.
Frey has no family, no home, no fortune, and yet her blood sings a song of glory. So when she hears of a monster slaughtering men, women, and children in a northern jarldom, she decides this the Mercies’ one chance to change their fate… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Child abuse
  • Attempted forced child sex work mentioned
  • Suicide & assisted voluntary euthanasia, on-page
  • Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-flagellation, on-page
  • Dead bodies & body parts
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Serious physical injury & illness
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child, on-page
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of a girlfriend recounted
  • Death of a mentor recounted
  • Death of a parent from illness recounted
  • Death of a friend, on-page
  • Graphic murder & attempted murder (theme)
  • Knife, axe & attempted murder
  • Hanging, off-page
  • Poisoning
  • Graphic drowning
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal attack
  • Graphic animal death
  • Animal abuse