The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.

In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.

When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Paedophilia
  • Rape
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Murder
  • Fire
  • Kidnapping & captivity
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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin’s orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father’s prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. 

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Forced sex work
  • Starvation
  • Dead bodies
  • Recreational drug use (smoking)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Gun violence
  • Deportation
  • Forced labour in work camps
  • World War Two (theme)
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Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

War-torn Germany. Four young people. Four dark secrets.

They come from different lands but each of them is hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies … and war.

As thousands of refugees flock to the coast, desperate to escape the advancing Red Army, the paths of four young people converge. All are hoping to board the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom.

Yet not all promises can be kept.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Rape mentioned
  • Death from childbirth
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Gun violence
  • Drowning
  • World War Two & the Holocaust
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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members — including Addie herself — as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Child sexual abuse
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You by Caroline Kepnes

You by Caroline Kepnes

When a beautiful aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexual assault
  • Substance addiction
  • Murder
  • Stalking (theme)
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V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Antisemitism
  • Paedophilia
  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Domestic violence & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Medical experimentation
  • Dead bodies
  • Dismemberment
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment
  • Concentration camps
  • Riots
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Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Rosaline Palmer has always lived by the rules—well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, she’s teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation’s most beloved baking show.

Winning the prize money would give her daughter the life she deserves. However, more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory.  Suave Alain Pope knows all the right moves to sweep her off her feet, but it’s shy electrician Harry Dobson who makes Rosaline question her long-held beliefs—about herself, her family, and her desires. Rosaline fears falling for Harry is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia
  • Classism
  • Anxiety
  • Attempted sexual assault
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The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp

The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp

The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp book cover

Larry is a Dogrib Indian growing up in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. His tongue, his hallucinations and his fantasies are hotter than the sun. At sixteen, he loves Iron Maiden, the North and Juliet Hope, the high school “tramp.” When Johnny Beck, a Metis from Hay River, moves to town, Larry is ready for almost anything.

In this powerful and often very funny first novel, Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in fiction. Skinny as spaghetti, nervy and self-deprecating, Larry is an appealing mixture of bravado and vulnerability. His past holds many terrors: an abusive father, blackouts from sniffing gasoline, an accident that killed several of his cousins. But through his friendship with Johnny, he’s ready now to face his memories—and his future.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny and sexism
  • Paedophilia
  • Child sexual assault
  • Abusive relationships
  • Domestic violence
  • Incest
  • Alcoholism
  • Drug abuse
  • Depersonalization
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Child pregnancy
  • Fire
  • Animal death
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10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac

10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac

10 Things I Can See from Here by Carrie Mac book cover

Think positive. Don’t worry; be happy. Keep calm and carry on.

Maeve has heard it all before. She’s been struggling with severe anxiety for a long time, and as much as she wishes it was something she could just talk herself out of, it’s not. She constantly imagines the worst, composes obituaries in her head, and is always ready for things to fall apart. To add to her troubles, her mom—the only one who really gets what Maeve goes through—is leaving for six months, so Maeve will be sent to live with her dad in Vancouver.

Vancouver brings a slew of new worries, but Maeve finds brief moments of calm (as well as even more worries) with Salix, a local girl who doesn’t seem to worry about anything. Between her dad’s wavering sobriety, her very pregnant stepmom insisting on a home birth, and her bumbling courtship with Salix, this summer brings more catastrophes than even Maeve could have foreseen. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Bimisia
  • Lesbomisia
  • Sexual assault, specifically nonconsensual kiss
  • Anxiety and anxiety attacks
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Drug abuse
  • Drug addiction, including relapse/s
  • Childbirth
  • Death of a friend
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City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lacklustre freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theatre called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Sexual assault
  • Physical abuse