Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Attempted suicide
  • Depression
  • Heroin addiction
  • Death by overdose
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The Secret Bridesmaid by Katy Birchall

The Secret Bridesmaid by Katy Birchall

Sophie Breeze is a brilliant bridesmaid. So brilliant, in fact, that she’s made it her full-time job.

As a professional bridesmaid, Sophie is hired by London brides to be their right-hand woman, posing as a friend but working behind the scenes to help plan the perfect wedding and ensure their big day goes off without a hitch. When she’s hired by Lady Victoria Swann––a former model and “It Girl” of 1970’s London; now the Marchioness of Meade––for the society wedding of the year, it should be a chance for Sophie to prove just how talented she is… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Drug overdose
  • Bullying
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Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Overdose mentioned
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a child
  • Plane crash mentioned
  • Car accident mentioned
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The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen

Emma Saylor doesn’t remember a lot about her mother, who died when she was ten. But she does remember the stories her mom told her about the big lake that went on forever, with cold, clear water and mossy trees at the edges.

Now it’s just Emma and her dad, and life is good, if a little predictable…until Emma is unexpectedly sent to spend the summer with her mother’s family—her grandmother and cousins she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Anxiety
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug abuse mentioned
  • Death of a mother by heroine overdose recounted
  • Shipwreck & boating accident recounted
  • Hurricane
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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone in feeling discontent, harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Queermisia
  • Misogyny
  • Eugenics
  • Cheating
  • Suicide
  • Self harm, including self-flagellation
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Child abuse
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Hanging
  • Electrocution
  • Animal neglect
  • Animal death & dead bodies
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury


Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted suicide by overdose
  • Self-immolation & immolation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use & abuse
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The Last to Let Go by Amber Smith

The Last to Let Go by Amber Smith

Junior year for Brooke Winters is supposed to be about change. She’s transferring schools, starting fresh, and making plans for college. But all of her dreams are shattered one hot summer afternoon when her mother is arrested for killing Brooke’s abusive father. No one really knows what happened that day, if it was premeditated or self-defense, whether it was right or wrong. And now Brooke and her siblings are on their own.

In a year of firsts—the first year without parents, first love, first heartbreak, and her first taste of freedom—Brooke must confront the shadow of her family’s violence and dysfunction, as she struggles to finds her true place in the world, and learns how to let go.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia
  • Domestic abuse & violence
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Overdose discussed
  • Death of a father
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Incarceration (parent)
  • Bullying
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The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental neglect
  • Drug addiction
  • Attempted suicide
  • Overdose
  • Death of a parent
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Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Drug overdose
  • Terminal illness
  • Death of an infant
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
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Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Louise is a single mom, a secretary, stuck in a modern-day rut. On a rare night out, she meets a man in a bar and sparks fly. When Louise arrives at work on Monday, she meets her new boss, David. The very married man from the bar… who says the kiss was a terrible mistake but who still can’t keep his eyes off Louise.

And then Louise bumps into Adele, who’s new to town and in need of a friend, but she also just happens to be married to David. As Louise is drawn into David and Adele’s orbit, she uncovers more puzzling questions than answers. The only thing that is crystal clear is that something in this marriage is very, very wrong, but Louise can’t guess how wrong―and how far a person might go to protect their marriage’s secrets. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Rape by coercion
  • Adult-minor relationship recounted
  • Domestic violence
  • Cheating
  • Abortion
  • Sleep disorder & night terrors
  • Substance addiction
  • Recreational drug use
  • Overdose
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Psychiatric hospital
  • Burns
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a wife
  • Death of a mother
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Stalking
  • Fire recounted
  • Graphic animal death & death of a pet
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