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.

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

That painful fact of life couldn’t be truer for the Sullivan sisters. Once, they used to be close, sharing secrets inside homemade blanket castles. Now, life in the Sullivan house means closed doors and secrets left untold. Fourteen-year-old Murphy, an aspiring magician, is shocked by the death of Siegfried, her pet turtle. Seventeen-year-old Claire is bound for better things than her Oregonian hometown—until she receives a crushing rejection from her dream college. And eighteen-year-old Eileen is nursing a growing addiction in the wake of life-altering news… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Terminal cancer (leukemia)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death & neglect

Keep This to Yourself by Tom Ryan

Keep This to Yourself by Tom Ryan

It’s been a year since the Catalog Killer terrorized the sleepy seaside town of Camera Cove, killing four people before disappearing without a trace. Like everyone else in town, eighteen-year-old Mac Bell is trying to put that horrible summer behind him—easier said than done since Mac’s best friend Connor was the murderer’s final victim. But when he finds a cryptic message from Connor, he’s drawn back into the search for the killer—who might not have been a random drifter after all. Now nobody—friends, neighbours, or even the sexy stranger with his own connection to the case—is beyond suspicion. Sensing that someone is… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Queermisia
  • Drug use
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder

The Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois

The Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois

Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies follows the terrified children as they scatter into the night to escape danger, dressed only in their pyjamas. They face their darkest childhood fears and new imaginary threats, like trolls masquerading as boulders and child-eating tree trunks. A harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness, poisoning, and accidents; of a love triangle among tots; a pint-sized hero; and a child on a murderous rampage that comes to a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Graphic death of a child
  • Murder

This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham

This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham

Three years ago, the melting of arctic permafrost released a pathogen of unknown origin into the atmosphere, causing a small percentage of people to undergo a transformation that became known as the Hollowing. Those impacted slowly became intolerant to normal food and were only able to gain sustenance by consuming the flesh of other human beings. Those who went without flesh quickly became feral, turning on their friends and family. However, scientists were able to create a synthetic version of human meat that would satisfy the hunger of those impacted by the Hollowing. As a result, humanity slowly began to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Transmisia mentioned
  • Child neglect
  • Deadnaming
  • Anxiety mentioned
  • Intrusive thoughts
  • Nightmares
  • Suicidal ideation, implied
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drugging
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction including dead bodies and body parts
  • Body horror
  • Graphic cannibalism
  • Pandemic
  • Scars
  • Needles & syringes
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a grandparent
  • Death of a sibling
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Captivity & confinement
  • Fire

*Context : The plot revolves around the protagonist eating people to survive. The deadname is not explicitly stated. The pandemic involves a fictionalised disease. Similarly, the drugging incident involves a fictional drug.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer, a spiritual counsellor, in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Torture

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia
  • Drug use & abuse
  • Death of a parent
  • Car accident
  • Murder

Wretched by Emily McIntire

Wretched by Emily McIntire

Evelina Westerly has always been the bad guy. As the brains, brawn, and botanist behind her family’s drug empire, she’s her father’s ruthless secret weapon. With her days divided between perfecting her greenhouse, seeking revenge for her sister’s murder, and putting a gun to the head of anyone in her way, Evelina doesn’t have time for anything else. Especially not for love. After a one-night stand with a gorgeous man at a nightclub, she’s sated her urges and is back to her criminal ways. That is, until that same man shows up as the new Westerly lackey under a totally… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Emotional child & sibling abuse recounted
  • Panic attack recounted
  • Drug use
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sibling recounted
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Murder
  • Graphic torture
  • Gun violence
  • Physical assault

The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell by Kate Brauning

The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell by Kate Brauning

Seventeen-year-old Dinah runs her family’s farm in the Ozarks. When she finds her grief-stricken mother dead in the living room with wealthy rancher Gabriel Gates standing over her, Dinah’s life narrows to a single point: kill Gabriel Gates. But Gates has built his wealth giving out bad loans and surrounds himself with bodyguards. Dinah’s mountains are now one giant foreclosure, including her own farm. It all belongs to him. Once he puts a ten-thousand-dollar reward on Dinah’s head, everyone in the starving county wants a piece of her. Homeless and alone in the woods, all she has is Johnny, the moonshining bootlegger at home in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder of a mother
  • Bullying
  • Homelessness

Beautiful Monster by JL Beck and Sade Rena

Beautiful Monster by J.L. Beck & Sade Rena

I thought I knew the truth. I thought he was my saviour. I’d spent my entire life running from him, only to become trapped in his web. He says I’ll become his wife, that I’ll provide him an heir. I’ll do both of those things, under one condition. His father must die.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking mentioned
  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Child abuse
  • Murder
  • Organised crime (mafia)
  • Captivity
  • Stalking

Perfect Villain by JL Beck and Sade Rena

Perfect Villain by J.L. Beck & Sade Rena

The second our eyes connected I felt the shift in the air. The crackle of fire igniting between us. He was dark, dangerous, and secretive. He came into my life like a storm, ripping apart everything I believed in, everything I thought I knew. With his mischievous smirk, stunning looks, and alluring behaviour I should’ve ran as far away from him as I could. But I was stupid. I trapped myself in his web. I thought I was safe with him. Safe in his arms, safe from a past that refused to let go. Turns out Christian Russo was the past I was running from, and my first mistake was ever thinking I could escape him.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault & dubious consent scenarios
  • Infidelity*
  • Death of parents
  • Graphic murder
  • Organised crime (mafia)
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking

*Context: The heroine is in a relationship at the beginning of the novel and her boyfriend is cheating on her with her roommate. The hero and heroine get together before she breaks up with her current boyfriend.