Tag Archives: Racism

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, classism & homophobia
  • Transphobia, misgendering & gender dysphoria
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word IMPROBABILIA. Now Apollo is a father himself–and as he and his wife, Emma, are settling into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo’s old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd. Irritable and disconnected from their new baby boy, at first Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go even deeper. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act–beyond any… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Post-partum depression discussed (on-page)
  • Graphic pregnancy & childbirth scenes
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

War Games by Alan Gratz

War Games by Alan Gratz

Evie can’t believe she’s made it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Evie’s family is still poor and reeling from devastating losses. She could have never guessed that the sport she took up to escape her reality would lead to this. Now, she’s competing in gymnastics on Team USA, with some of the greatest athletes in the world like track and field star Jesse Owens. But all is not as it seems in Berlin, a city now ruled by the Nazis and their tyrannical leader, Adolf Hitler. And Evie has secrets of her own. With two other Olympic athletes, who each have their own reasons for despising the Nazis, Evie has… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism, racism, homophobia, ableism & Nazism
  • Gun & knife violence
  • World War II including discussions of genocide, concentration camps and forced sterilization of disabled people (theme)
  • Homelessness & poverty (protagonist)

Miles Morales Suspended by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales Suspended by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales is still just your average teenager. He has unexpectedly become totally obsessed with poetry and can never seem to do much more than babble around his crush. Nothing too weird. Oh! Except, just yesterday, he used his spidey superpowers to save the world (no biggie) from an evil mastermind called The Warden. And the grand prize Miles gets for that is… Suspension. But what begins as a long boring day of in-school suspension is interrupted by a little bzzz in his mind. His spidey-sense is telling him there’s something not quite right here, and soon he finds himself in a fierce battle with an insidious… termite? His unexpect.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & classism
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Fantasy violence
  • Emesis

Mask of the Deer Woman by Laurie L. Dove

To find a missing young woman, the new tribal marshal must also find herself. At rock bottom following her daughter’s murder, ex-Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation that raised him, but they need a new tribal marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home. In the last decade, too many young women have disappeared from the rez. Some dead, others just… gone. Now, local college student Chenoa Cloud is missing, and Starr falls into an investigation that leaves her drowning in memories of her daughter—the girl she failed to… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Rape mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & alcoholism mentioned
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder mentioned
  • Animal death

Iron and Embers by Helen Scheuerer

Wren Embervale, alchemist-turned-assassin, finds solace in only one thing: seeking vengeance for the death of her friends. The wars of the past may be over, but her thirst for revenge is far from quenched. For years, she has been content with her poisons and potions for company, but when an unknown form of alchemy is used to attack a king of the midrealms, Wren’s time in the shadows comes to an end. She’s offered a place at the ancient alchemy academy of Drevenor to find a cure to the dark magic threatening the kingdoms. To win her spot, she must conquer the Gauntlet, a grueling series of deadly trials.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic abuse discussed (secondary character)
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Suicide mentioned

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby’s high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that’s exactly what they get. So Ebby flees… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & slavery
  • Miscarriage
  • Death of a child

The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto

After an ultra-romantic honeymoon across Europe, Meddy Chan and her husband Nathan have landed in Jakarta to spend Chinese New Year with her entire extended family. Chinese New Year, already the biggest celebration of the Lunar calendar, gets even more festive when a former beau of Second Aunt’s shows up at the Chan residence bearing extravagant gifts—he’s determined to rekindle his romance with Second Aunt and the gifts are his way of announcing his courtship. His grand gesture goes awry however, when it’s discovered that not all the gifts were meant for Second Aunt and the Chans—one particular…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Drugging
  • Kidnapping

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA – they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death. This is all about to change. Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Emesis & allergic reacction
  • Murder & torture
  • Car accident
  • Stalking
  • Bullying
  • Animal death & cruelty

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies… especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Nonconsensual voyeurism of children mentioned
  • Rape of a child
  • Incest (father-daughter)
  • Child pregnancy from rape
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction, including dead bodies
  • Emesis
  • Animal abuse