How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Parental neglect
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Panic attack
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Fire

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & antiziganism
  • Misogyny
  • Child abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Graphic childbirth
  • Death of a child

How Long ’til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin

How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin

In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow south must figure out how to save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Queermisia
  • Rape
  • Animal cruelty

The City We Became by NK Jemisin

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all. 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Misogyny
  • Antisemitism
  • Sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence discussed
  • Drug use mentioned
  • Alcoholism mentioned

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.

But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England’s magical past and regained some of the powers of England’s magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism

Cape by Kate Hannigan 

Cape by Kate Hannigan and illustrated by Patrick Spaziante

Josie O’Malley does a lot to help out Mam after her father goes off to fight the Nazis, but she wishes she could do more—like all those caped heroes who now seem to have disappeared. If Josie can’t fly and control weather like her idol, Zenobia, maybe she can put her math smarts to use cracking puzzles for the government.

After an official tosses out her puzzler test because she’s a girl, it soon becomes clear that an even more top-secret agency has its eye on Josie, along with two other applicants: Akiko and Mae. The trio bonds over their shared love of female superhero celebrities, from Fantomah to Zenobia to the Black Cat. But during one extraordinary afternoon, they find themselves transformed… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Racism
  • Death of father mentioned
  • Fire
  • Bullying
  • Japanese internment camps
  • World War Two

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott, and illustrated by Harmony Becker

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s — and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten “relocation centers,” hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Concentration camps
  • World War Two

Given by Nandi Taylor

Given by Nandi Taylor

As a princess of the Yirba, Yenni is all-but-engaged to the prince of a neighbouring tribe. She knows it’s her duty to ensure peace for her people, but as her father’s stubborn illness steadily worsens, she sets out on a sacred journey to the empire of Cresh, determined to find a way to save him at any cost, even though failure could mean the wrath of her gods and ruin for her people. One further complication? On the day she arrives at the Prevan Academy for Battle and Magical Arts, she meets an arrogant dragon-shifter named Weysh who claims she’s his “Given”, or destined mate. Muscular, beautiful (and completely infuriating), he’s exactly the kind of distraction Yenni can’t afford while her father’s life hangs in the balance… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Rape mentioned
  • Colonialism

Unashamed by Leah Vernon

Unashamed by Leah Vernon

Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn’t any room for imperfection. Good Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn’t have a missing father or a mother with mental illness. They didn’t have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn’t have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn’t have secret abortions. In Unashamed, Vernon takes to task the myth of the perfect Muslim woman with frank dispatches on her love-hate relationship with her hijab and her faith, race, weight, mental illness, domestic violence, sexuality, the millennial world of dating, and the process of finding her voice… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Islamomisia
  • Racism
  • Fatmisia
  • Rape
  • Domestic violence

Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson

Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson

When a ghost ship is discovered, its crew presumed dead after trying to reach the storm-shrouded island Akinah, Navani Kholin must send an expedition to make sure the island hasn’t fallen into enemy hands. Knights Radiant who fly too near find their Stormlight suddenly drained, so the voyage must be by sea.

Shipowner Rysn Ftori lost the use of her legs but gained the companionship of Chiri-Chiri, a Stormlight-ingesting winged larkin, a species once thought extinct. Now Rysn’s pet is ill, and any hope for Chiri-Chiri’s recovery can be found only at the ancestral home of the larkin: Akinah. With the help of Lopen, the formerly one-armed Windrunner, Rysn must accept Navani’s quest and sail into the perilous storm from which no one has returned alive. If the crew cannot uncover the secrets of the hidden island city before the wrath of its ancient guardians falls upon them, the fate of Roshar and the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism discussed
  • Paraplegia