This Is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang

This Is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang

Janie and Micah, Micah and Janie. That’s how it’s been ever since elementary school, when Janie Vivien moved next door. Janie says Micah is everything she is not. Where Micah is shy, Janie is outgoing. Where Micah loves music, Janie loves art. It’s the perfect friendship—as long as no one finds out about it. But then Janie goes missing and everything Micah thought he knew about his best friend is colored with doubt.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Smoking
  • Death of a mother in a car accident
  • Physical assault
  • Fire
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A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest.

With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Sexual harassment
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Death of a pregnant woman
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Arson
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The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Marital rape
  • Child sexual abuse
  • Parental neglect
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Domestic violence
  • Drug abuse
  • Stillbirth
  • Murder
  • Cults
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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader’s wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel – the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Colonialism
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Rape
  • Arranged marriage
  • Substance addiction
  • Drug abuse
  • Death of a child
  • Kidnapping
  • Fire
  • War themes
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The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in precolonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. These two women’s lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Slut shaming
  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Suicide
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Future Girl by Asphyxia

Future Girl by Asphyxia

Piper’s mum wants her to be ‘normal’, to pass as hearing and get a good job. But when peak oil hits and Melbourne lurches towards environmental catastrophe, Piper has more important things to worry about, such as how to get food.

When she meets Marley, a CODA (child of Deaf adult), a door opens into a new world – where Deafness is something to celebrate rather than hide, and where resilience is created through growing your own food rather than it being delivered on a truck… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Abusive relationship
  • Animal death
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Reasonable Doubt by Gregory Ashe

Reasonable Doubt by Gregory Ashe

After almost twenty years, Emery Hazard finally has the man he loves. But things with his boyfriend and fellow detective, John-Henry Somerset, are never easy, and they’ve been more complicated lately for two reasons: Somers’s ex-wife and daughter. No matter what Hazard does, he can’t seem to get away from the most important women in his boyfriend’s life.

While Hazard struggles with his new reality (changing dirty diapers, just to start), a bizarre murder offers a distraction. John Oscar Walden, the leader of a local cult, is found dead by the police, and the case falls to Hazard and Somers. The investigation… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Conversion therapy recounted, on-page
  • Rape
  • Child abuse
  • Torture mentioned
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Criminal Past by Gregory Ashe

Criminal Past by Gregory Ashe

It all starts to go wrong at the shooting gallery. Emery Hazard and his boyfriend, John-Henry Somerset, just want to enjoy the day at the Dore County Independence Fair. At the shooting gallery, though, Hazard comes face to face with one of his old bullies: Mikey Grames. Even as a drugged-out wreck, Mikey is a reminder of all the ugliness in Hazard’s past. Worse, Mikey seems to know something Hazard doesn’t—something about the fresh tension brewing in town.

When the Chief of Police interrupts Hazard’s day at the fair, she has a strange request. She doesn’t want Hazard and Somers to solve a murder. She wants them to prevent one. The future victim? Mayor Sherman Newton—a man who has tried to have Hazard and Somers… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Homomisic hate crime recounted
  • Graphic rape recounted
  • Graphic torture
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The Same Breath by Gregory Ashe

The Same Breath by Gregory Ashe

Teancum Leon, who goes by Tean, is a wildlife veterinarian. His life has settled into a holding pattern: he loves his job, he hates first dates, and he only occasionally has to deal with his neighbor Mrs. Wish’s cat-related disasters.

All of that changes, though, when a man appears in his office, asking for help to find his brother. Jem is convinced that something bad has happened to Benny, and he thinks Tean might be able to help. Tean isn’t sure, but he’s willing to try. After all, Jem is charming and sweet and surprisingly vulnerable. Oh. And hot… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Fatmisia
  • Racism
  • Homomisia
  • Rape mentioned
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Child abuse mentioned
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Animal death
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If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

In this powerful and imaginative debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar nakedly captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by braiding together personal and marginalized people’s histories. After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar’s poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Genocide
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