Tag Archives: Murder & Attempted Murder

The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma

The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma

For Elena Aadya Ravence, fire is yearning. She longs to feel worthy of her Phoenix god, of her ancestors who transformed the barren dunes of Sayon into a thriving kingdom. But though she knows the ways and wiles of the desert better than she knows her own skin, the secrets of the Eternal Flame elude her. And without them, she’ll never be accepted as queen. For Leo Malhari Ravence, fire is control. He is not ready to give up his crown—there’s still too much work to be done to ensure his legacy remains untarnished, his family protected. But power comes with a price, and he’ll wage war with the heavens themselves to keep… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Fire

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive. Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words, “Goodnight, pretty girl”… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Drug use mentioned
  • Murder

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north–where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service–Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery–and at the center of it… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Incest
  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Self-harm
  • Drugging
  • Blood & gore depiction including blood-drinking & letting (theme)
  • Body horror
  • Needles
  • Murder including patricide
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Vivisepulture (buried alive)
  • Poisoning
  • Animal death & cruelty

Gutter Child by Jael Richardson

Gutter Child by Jael Richardson

Set in an imagined world in which the most vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society, Gutter Child uncovers a nation divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In this world, Elimina Dubois is one of only 100 babies taken from the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity as part of a social experiment led by the Mainland government. But when her Mainland mother dies, Elimina finds herself all alone, a teenager forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Indentured servitude
  • Rape
  • Forced sex work
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder of an infant
  • Police brutality

The Good Lie by AR Torre

The Good Lie by A.R. Torre

Cat Winthorpe has worked hard to get what she has: a gorgeous home; social standing; and William, her successful, handsome husband. Then a friendly new couple moves into the estate next door. While cautious, a good neighbour like Cat greets them with open arms and warm hospitality. Neena Ryder isn’t a fellow lady of leisure. A life coach with off-the-rack dresses, personal issues, and a husband who hasn’t delivered, she’s anxious to move up in the world. This beautiful new town is a step in the right direction. It’s also making Neena aware of what she doesn’t have. Namely, William. When Neena’s infatuation escalates into… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Paranoid schizophrenia discussed
  • Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
  • Murder

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

It is the height of summer, and Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the village of Three Pines. But they’re not alone. The Finney family—rich, cultured, and respectable—has also arrived for a celebration of their own. The beautiful Manoir Bellechasse might be surrounded by nature, but there is something unnatural looming. As the heat rises and the humidity closes in, some surprising guests turn up at the family reunion, and a terrible summer storm leaves behind a dead body. It is up to Chief Inspector Gamache to unearth secrets long buried… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Eating disorder
  • Murder

Hooked by Emily McIntire

James has always had one agenda: destroy his enemy, Peter Michaels. When Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy shows up in James’s bar, he sees his way in. Seduce the girl and use her for his revenge. It’s the perfect plan until things in James’s organization begin to crumble. Suddenly, he has to find the traitor in his midst, and his plan for revenge gets murkier as James starts to see Wendy as more than just a pawn in his game. Wendy has been cloistered away most of her life by her wealthy cold father, but a spontaneous night out with friends turns into an intense and addictive love affair with the dark and brooding James… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Paedophilia
  • Drugging
  • Pregnancy
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction including amputation and emesis
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent in a car accident recounted
  • Death of a relative in a plane crash
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault
  • Kidnapping
  • Consensual choking (breath pay)

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Paedophilia & sexual assault of a child
  • Body horror
  • Starvation
  • Cannibalism
  • Infanticide, on-page
  • Torture
  • Animal death (cat)

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbours. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice. When Margot returns home to help care for her sick uncle, it feels like walking into a time capsule… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault of a minor, off-page
  • Domestic abuse
  • Relative with dementia
  • Suicide
  • Miscarriage
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings, he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. “There is a balm in Gilead,” his neighbour Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, “to make the wounded whole.” While Gamache doesn’t talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident