Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony

Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony

It’s early one morning on a hot day in August, and millennial congressman Alexander Paine Wilson (R), planning his first reelection campaign and in deep denial about his sexuality, receives a mysterious, over-sized FedEx delivery on his front stoop. Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark.

This outrageous, edge-of-your-seat novel hurtles between contemporary Washington, DC, where Wilson tries to get rid of the unsightly beast before it destroys his career, and Victorian England–where we meet Titus Downing, the taxidermist who stuffed the aardvark, and Richard Ostlet, the naturalist who hunted her. Our present world, we begin to see, has been shaped in profound and disturbing ways by the secret that binds these men.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Eye horror
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Kidnapped by the Pirate by Keira Andrews

Kidnapped by the Pirate by Keira Andrews

Nathaniel Bainbridge is used to hiding, whether it’s concealing his struggles with reading or his forbidden desire for men. Under the thumb of his controlling father, the governor of Primrose Isle, he’s sailing to the fledging colony, where he’ll surrender to a respectable marriage for his family’s financial gain. Then pirates strike and he’s kidnapped for ransom by the Sea Hawk, a legendary villain of the New World.

Bitter and jaded, Hawk harbors futile dreams of leaving the sea for a quiet life, but men like him don’t deserve peace. He has a score to settle with Nathaniel’s father—the very man whose treachery forced him into piracy—and he’s sure Nathaniel is just as contemptible… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Internalised homomisia
  • Kidnapping
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Love, Heather by Laurie Petrou

Love, Heather by Laurie Petrou

Stevie never meant for things to go this far. When she and Dee–defiant, bold, indestructible Dee–started all this, there was a purpose to their acts of vengeance: to put the bullies of Woepine High School back in their place. And three months ago, Stevie believed they deserved it. Once her best friend turned on her, the rest of the school followed. Stevie was alone and unprotected with a target on her back. Online, it was worse.

It was Dee’s idea to get them all back with a few clever pranks, signing each act Love, Heather–an homage to her favorite 80’s revenge flick. Despite herself, Stevie can’t help getting caught up in the payback… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Racism
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Eating disorders
  • Gun violence
  • Bullying
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The Dare by Elle Kennedy

College was supposed to be my chance to get over my ugly-duckling complex and spread my wings. Instead, I wound up in a sorority full of mean girls. I already have a hard time fitting in, so when my Kappa Chi sisters issue the challenge, I can’t say no. The dare: seduce the hottest new hockey player in the junior class. Conor Edwards is a regular at Greek Row parties…and in Greek Row sorority beds. He’s the one you fall for before you learn that guys like him don’t give girls like me a second glance. Except Mr. Popular throws me for a loop—rather than laughing in my face, he does me a solid by letting me take him upstairs to pretend… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body-shaming & weight gain discussed
  • Homophobia discussed
  • Blackmail & revenge pornography
  • Bullying

When Forever Ended by Cara Dee

When Forever Ended by Cara Dee

At ten years old, Kelly and I were two rambunctious boys who carved our initials into a tree in the forest and promised to be best friends forever. At forty-three, it’d been twenty-four years since I’d last seen him—after I’d foolishly kissed him—and depression was threatening to suffocate me.

Not even my wife and two children could lift the fog. I was riddled with guilt and self-hatred, and I knew I was slowly but surely fading away.

Then one day, Kelly was back in town.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Internalised homomisia
  • Cheating
  • Depression
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One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite & Maritza Moulite

When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Coming out themes
  • Racism
  • Queermisia
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Police brutality & violence
  • Hanging & lynching
  • Fire & arson
  • Kidnapping & confinement
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Cheer Up by Crystal Frasier

Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier and illustrated by Val Wise

Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who’s under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeeBee is a people-pleaser—a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life to keep their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Fatmisia
  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Emotional abuse
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The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

A poetry collection divided into four different parts: the The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now—indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn’t burn in this one.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Intimate partner abuse
  • Eating disorders
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Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan deep in the forbidden woods of Neverland, the two form an unbreakable bond. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland’s inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. And yet, she is willing to risk everything—her family, her future—to be with him.

Then an English girl named Wendy Darling arrives on the island. With dangers tightening around them, Tiger Lily soon finds out how far she is willing to go to keep Peter with her in Neverland… and discovers that the deadliest enemies lurk inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia
  • Transmisia
  • Death of a father to suicide by drowning
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Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Racism
  • Eugenics
  • Parental abuse recounted
  • Emesis
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Bullying
  • Homelessness
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