Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Attempted rape, on-page
  • Nonconsensual body modifications (tattoos)
  • Decapitation
  • Cannibalism
  • Murder
  • Torture

The Midnight Kingdom by Tara Sim

A cataclysmic battle to save the city of Nexus has left the four noble heirs scattered across the four realms.

Taesia, the shadow-wielding rebel of House Lastrider, and Nikolas, the solider son of House Cyr, have been cast into Noctus, the realm of night. But they are not alone. The dangerous and unpredictable god of light has traveled with them, and he will do anything in his power to destroy Noctus once and for all… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Eye trauma
  • Murder
  • Torture

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage’s employment status isn’t just important, it’s vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain results in a job offer—naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don’t find evil so attractive, Evie.

But just when she’s getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Attempted sexual assault & sexual harassment
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a brother recounted
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Sword violence

*Context: The protagonist’s mother abandoned her after she accidentally killed her son, the protgaonist’s brother.

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Poverty themes
  • Racism, specifically Nazis, mentioned
  • Prejudice against Indigenous peoples mentioned
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Suicidal ideations
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Substance abuse
  • Blood depiction
  • Cancer discussed
  • Grief depiction
  • Fire
  • Murder

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.
On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three ‘saints’ who control them… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Miscarriage
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Cannibalism
  • Dismemberment
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Animal death

The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber

After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she’ll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.

But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption (on-page, protagonist)
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction, including mentions of decapitation, blood-drinking and death from a vampire bite
  • Murder by stabbing during a knife fight
  • Near-strangulation
  • Loss of autonomy (magical curse)

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Evangeline Fox was raised in her beloved father’s curiosity shop, where she grew up on legends about immortals, like the tragic Prince of Hearts. She knows his powers are mythic, his kiss is worth dying for, and that bargains with him rarely end well.

But when Evangeline learns that the love of her life is about to marry another, she becomes desperate enough to offer the Prince of Hearts whatever he wants in exchange for his help to stop the wedding. The prince only asks for three kisses… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction & mentions of blood-drinking
  • Death of a parents mentioned (off-page)
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Forced starvation (magical, vampires caged without blood)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Animal attack (wolf)

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.

Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Drugging
  • Death during childbirth
  • Emesis
  • Blood & Gore depiction
  • Captivity
  • Kidnapping
  • Murder
  • Torture

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars–Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic–and they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.

As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Violent hate crimes
  • Child sexual abuse, including grooming & paedophilia
  • Domestic abuse, including emotional & physical
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol use
  • Drug use
  • Abortion
  • Murder
  • Animal death

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of travelling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Domestic abuse mentioned
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Death of parents
  • Fire, arson & burns
  • Murder
  • Poisoning
  • Poverty themes
  • Homelessness