On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel

Arcade and Daffodil are twins born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother’s stories. Together, they disappear into their imaginations and forge a world all their own. But what the two sisters can’t escape are the generational ghosts that haunt their family. Growing up in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the sisters cling tightly to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with the memories of her early life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. As her… Read More.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sex work
  • Graphic drug use
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Murder & torture
  • Animal cruelty

All Men of Genius by Lev A.C. Rosen

Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who continues his father’s policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry. But keeping the secret of her sex won’t be easy, not with her friend Jack’s constant habit of pulling pranks, and especially not… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & sex work mentioned
  • Animal experimentation

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s debut novel immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family – Pauline, Cholly, Sam and Pecola – in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Racism & colourism (theme)
  • Graphic rape of an 11-year-old child (on-page)*
  • Sex work mentioned
  • Physical, emotional & psychological child abuse
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of an infant
  • Housefire mentioned
  • Animal abuse, injury & death mentioned

Context: Includes passages from the paedophilic rapist’s perspective.

Stroke of Midnight by K. Webster

Money can buy anything. And anyone. As the head of the Constantine family, I’m used to people bowing to my will. Cruel, rigid, unyielding—I’m all those things. When I discover the one woman who doesn’t wither under my gaze, but instead smiles right back at me, I’m intrigued. Ash Elliott needs cash, and I make her trade in crudeness and degradation for it. I crave her tears, her moans, her submission. I pay for each one. And every time, she comes back for more. When she challenges me with an offer of her own, I have to decide if I’m willing to give her far more than cold hard cash. But love can have deadly consequences when… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dubious consent & sex work*
  • Sexual assault & harassment

*Context : The protagonist is an 18-year-old girl who is paid for sexual services by her employee, a 37-year-old man as old who is ‘turned on’ by her youth.

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island. I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time ― it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & neglect recounted
  • Sex work recounted (survival)
  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Child homelessness recounted
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei

Nga-Yee, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Siu-Man. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Nga-Yee comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Siu-Man silent and withdrawn? Nga-Yee cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister – even if that means tracking down her sister’s friends one by one and making them confess.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sex slavery
  • Paedophilia
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
  • Bullying & cyberharassment

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & colourism
  • Sexism
  • Slavery
  • Sex-trafficking & slavery mentioned
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Trauma
  • Intrusive thoughts & panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug abuse
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Physical injuries including amputation (off-page)
  • Medical experimentation mentioned
  • Famine & starvation
  • Emesis
  • Cannibalism
  • Decapitation
  • Mutilation & genital mutilation (castration)
  • Murder & mass death
  • Torture
  • Sword violence
  • Poisoning
  • Bombings
  • Animal abuse & death
  • Graphic war themes & battle scenes (theme)
  • Colonialism (theme)

Daughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent

A former slave fighting for justice. A reclusive warrior who no longer believes it exists. And a dark magic that will entangle their fates. Ripped from a forgotten homeland as a child, Tisaanah learned how to survive with nothing but a sharp wit and a touch of magic. But the night she tries to buy her freedom, she barely escapes with her life. Desperate to save the best friend she left behind, Tisaanah journeys to the Orders, the most powerful organizations of magic Wielders in the world. But to join their ranks, she must complete an apprenticeship with Maxantarius Farlione, a handsome and reclusive fire wielder who despises…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery & sex slavery
  • Rape & sexual assault mentioned
  • Trauma & nightmares
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Kidnapping
  • Blood, gore & injury depiction
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Knife & sword violence
  • Whipping
  • Loss of autonomy (possession)
  • War themes & battle scenes including genocide

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent

In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn. The House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside. When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault & slavery mentioned
  • Torture

Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha

All Noelle Cunningham has ever wanted is a life beyond–beyond the walls of Eden, where only the righteous are allowed to remain, and beyond her stiflingly restrictive existence as a councilman’s daughter. But only ruins lie outside the City, remnants of a society destroyed by solar storms decades earlier. he sectors surrounding Eden house the corrupt, the criminal–men like Jasper McCray, bootlegger and cage fighter. Jas clawed his way up from nothing to stand at the right hand of Sector Four’s ruthless leader, and he’ll defend the O’Kane gang with his life. But no fight ever prepared him for the exiled City girl who… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault recounted
  • Underage sex work mentioned*
  • Physical injury
  • Torture mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Organised crime

*Context : The female protagonist was trained to be a sex worker as a child.