Giant Days Vol. 13 by Katherine Arden

Giant Days, Vol 13 by John Allison and Max Sarin

Giant Days, Vol 13 by John Allison and Max Sarin book cover

As Esther re-evaluates the biggest decisions in her life, she enters an essay contest that could change everything for her!

LONDON CALLING!

Everything going fine for Esther – she’s only dealing with a past break up, facing her own mortality and the pressure of an essay contest that could change her life. Don’t worry, she’s got everything figured out…except for the getting everything figured out part. Otherwise she’s not racing towards imminent disaster.

But for McGraw, the tough realities of life hit hard as he learns about the loss of someone close to him and has to find a way to process this shocking news.

The Eisner Award winning team of John Allison (By Night) and Max Sarin return to Sheffield for heartbreak, muscle aches, the very special pain of going corporate…and why the love of good friends is the secret to getting through it all.

Collects Giant Days #49-52.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug-using, specifically smoking
  • Grief and loss depiction
  • Death of a mother, recounted
  • Death of a father, off-page
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Now I Rise by Kiersten White

Now I Rise by Kiersten White

Lada Dracul has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she’s always had: herself. After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn’t getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart. There’s no time to wonder whether he still thinks about her, even loves her. She left him before he could leave her.

What Lada needs is her younger brother Radu’s subtlety and skill. But Mehmed has sent him to Constantinople—and it’s no diplomatic mission. Mehmed wants control of the city, and Radu has earned an unwanted place as a double-crossing spy behind enemy lines. Radu longs for his sister’s fierce confidence—but for the first time in his life, he rejects her unexpected plea for help. Torn between loyalties to faith, to the Ottomans, and to Mehmed, he knows he owes Lada nothing. If she dies, he could never forgive himself—but if he fails in Constantinople, will Mehmed ever forgive him?

As nations fall around them, the Dracul siblings must decide: what will they sacrifice to fulfill their destinies? Empires will topple, thrones will be won . . . and souls will be lost.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Victim blaming
  • Rape & sexual assault
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And I Darken by Kiersten White

And I Darken by Kiersten White

No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.

Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.

But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Attempted rape & sexual assault
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Knife violence
  • Strangulation
  • Torture (off-page)
  • Near-drowning
  • Whipping
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The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden book cover

The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden’s enchanting first novel, introduced readers to an irresistible heroine. Vasilisa has grown up at the edge of a Russian wilderness, where snowdrifts reach the eaves of her family’s wooden house and there is truth in the fairy tales told around the fire. Vasilisa’s gift for seeing what others do not won her the attention of Morozko—Frost, the winter demon from the stories—and together they saved her people from destruction. But Frost’s aid comes at a cost, and her people have condemned her as a witch.

In The Girl in the Tower, Vasilisa faces an impossible choice. Driven from her home by frightened villagers, she has only two options left: marriage or the convent. She cannot bring herself to accept either fate and instead chooses adventure, dressing herself as a boy and setting off astride her magnificent stallion Solovey.

But after she prevails in a skirmish with bandits, everything changes. The Grand Prince of Moscow anoints her a hero for her exploits, and she is reunited with her beloved sister and brother, who are now part of the Grand Prince’s inner circle. She dares not reveal to the court that she is a girl, for if her deception were discovered it would have terrible consequences for herself and her family. Before she can untangle herself from Moscow’s intrigues—and as Frost provides counsel that may or may not be trustworthy—she will also confront an even graver threat lying in wait for all of Moscow itself.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape threats
  • Sexual assault, specifically nonconsensual kiss and unwanted touching
  • Childbirth, on-page
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The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When a recent arrival from Virginia tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • White supremacy & the Klu Klux Klan
  • Slavery
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Paedophilia
  • Domestic violence
  • PTSD
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Sterilization
  • Murder
  • Lynching
  • Whipping
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Killing Stalking by Koogi

Killing Stalking by Koogi

Yoon Bum, a scrawny, quiet boy, has a crush on one of the most popular and handsome guys in school, Sangwoo. One day, with Yoon Bum’s obsession toward Sangwoo reaching its peak, Yoon Bum decides to enter Sangwoo’s home. But what he sees inside is not the Sangwoo he had dreamed of.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Rape
  • Physical & psychological abuse
  • Abusive relationship
  • Borderline Personality Disorder
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Mutilation
  • Kidnapping
  • Stalking
  • Knife violence
  • Torture
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Hideous Beauty by William Hussey

Hideous Beauty by William Hussey

When Dylan and Ellis’s secret relationship is exposed on social media, Dylan is forced to come out. To Dylan’s surprise they are met with support and congratulations, and an amazing reception at their highschool dance. Perhaps people aren’t as narrow-minded as he thought?

But Dylan’s happiness is short-lived. Ellis suddenly becomes angry, withdrawn, and as they drive home from the dance, he loses control of the car, sending it plunging into Hunter’s Lake. Barely conscious, Dylan is pulled free of the wreck, while Ellis is left to drown.

Grief-stricken, Dylan vows to discover what happened to Ellis that night and piece together the last months of his boyfriend’s life – and realises just how little he knew about the boy he loved.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Coming out themes
  • Homomisia
  • Rape
  • Physical & sexual abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Car accident
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Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews book cover

After being kicked out of the Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid, Andrea’s whole existence is in shambles. All she can do is to try to put herself back together, something made easier by working for Cutting Edge, a small investigative firm owned by her best friend Kate Daniels.

When several shapeshifters working for Raphael Medrano—the male alpha of the Clan Bouda and Andrea’s former lover—die unexpectedly at a dig site, Andrea is assigned to investigate…and must work with Raphael. As Andrea’s search for the killer leads her into the secret underbelly of supernatural Atlanta, she knows that dealing with her feelings for Raphael might have to take a back seat to saving the world…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape, recounted
  • Blood and gore depiction
  • Physical injury
  • Torture, recounted
  • Gun violence
  • Fire, recounted
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Going Too Far by Catherine Alliott

Going Too Far by Catherine Alliott

Going Too Far by Catherine Alliott book cover

“You’ve gone all fat and complacent because you’ve got your man, haven’t you?”

There are things only your best friend can tell you but this outrageous suggestion is met with indignation from Polly Penhalligan, who is recently married, trying for a baby and blissfully happy in her beautiful manor farmhouse in Cornwall. At least, she was, until Pippa’s unfortunate remark forces her to realise that her idyllic life of gorging on chocolate biscuits, counting her seemingly endless blessings and not getting dressed until lunchtime could be having a few unwelcome side-effects.

So Polly decides to razz things up a bit — and agrees to allow her home to be used as a location for a commercial. Having a glamorous film crew around should certainly put something of a bomb under rural life, shouldn’t it? But even before the cameras are set up and the stars released from their kennels, Polly’s life and marriage have been turned upside down.

This time, it seems, she’s gone too far…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Victim-blaming
  • Rape
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The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan book cover

Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents’ expectations, but lately she’s finding that harder and harder to do. She rolls her eyes instead of screaming when they blatantly favor her brother and she dresses conservatively at home, saving her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don’t know about. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech, where she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.

But when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana’s plans fall apart. Her parents are devastated; being gay may as well be a death sentence in the Bengali community. They immediately whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Only through reading her grandmother’s old diary is Rukhsana able to gain some much needed perspective.

Rukhsana realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Colourism
  • Conversion therapy
  • Islamophobia
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Domestic abuse
  • Verbal abuse, towards queer characters
  • Physical abuse, towards queer characters
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