Starvation, Food Scarcity & Famine – Page 4

Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams

Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams

As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Klu Klux Klan
Hate crimes mentioned
Child abuse
Forced institutionalisation mentioned
Starvation
Police violence mentioned
Lynching, off-page
Mass drowning mentioned
Animal sacrifice (snake)

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

There is no cure for being stung. Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she awakens, her world no longer exists. Her house is abandoned and broken. Her neighborhood is barren and dead. And there is a tattoo on her right hand. A tattoo Fiona doesn’t remember getting…but somehow she must conceal at any cost. Because humanity has been divided. Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded, while a select few live protected inside a fortresslike wall… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sex slavery
Rape
Starvation

What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix by Tasha Suri

What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix by Tasha Suri

As the abandoned son of a Lascar—a sailor from India—Heathcliff has spent most of his young life maligned as an “outsider.” Now he’s been flung into an alien life in the Yorkshire moors, where he clings to his birth father’s language even though it makes the children of the house call him an animal, and the maids claim he speaks gibberish. Catherine is the younger child of the estate’s owner, a daughter with light skin and brown curls and a mother that nobody talks about. Her father is grooming her for a place in proper society, and that’s all that matters. Catherine knows she… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Misogyny
Slavery mentioned
Child abuse
Starvation
Illness-related weight loss mentioned
Death of a sister-in-law from childbirth mentioned
Death of a parent
Gun violence

Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega

Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega

Every year, in the magical town of Ravenskill, Witchlings who participate in the Black Moon Ceremony are placed into covens and come into their powers as full-fledged witches. And twelve-year-old Seven Salazar can’t wait to be placed in the most powerful coven with her best friend! But on the night of the ceremony, in front of the entire town, Seven isn’t placed in one of the five covens. She’s a Spare! Spare covens have fewer witches, are less powerful, and are looked down on by everyone. Even worse, when Seven and the other two Spares perform the magic circle to seal their coven and cement themselves as sisters, it doesn’t work! … Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse mentioned*
Death of a brother
Bullying

*Context: Valley’s father starved her for two days because of school grades.

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Ableism
Paedophilia & sexual assault of a child
Body horror
Starvation
Cannibalism
Infanticide, on-page
Torture
Animal death (cat)

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace. It includes an author’s note and acknowledgments from Arn Chorn-Pond himself. Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child sexual abuse
Rape mentioned
Blood & gore depiction
Dead bodies
Cannibalism
Starvation
Death of a child
Cambodia’s Killing Fields (theme)
Murder & mass murder
Stabbing
Gun violence

Stolen Trophy by KA Knight and Kendra Moreno

Stolen Trophy by K.A. Knight and Kendra Moreno

My life was perfect. I had an amazing fiance, a business I love, parties and balls every week, everything was wonderful… until that night. The night where everything changed. My world is crashing down around me. Everything I knew is a lie and the men, the men in the masks, tell me that as they steal me away into the night. I wake chained, scared, and alone with four criminals. Criminals who tell me I’m theirs now, theirs to steal, theirs to kill. But there is something they don’t know about me, my past shrouded in darkness. They thought they had got themselves a pretty jewel… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Cheating*
PTSD & trauma
Panic attacks
Starvation mentioned
Kidnapping & captivity
Childhood poverty

*Context : The protagonist’s fiance cheated on her.

Orpheus Girl by Brynne Rebele-Henry

Orpheus Girl by Brynne Rebele-Henry

Abandoned by a single mother she never knew, 16-year-old Raya—obsessed with ancient myths—lives with her grandmother in a small conservative Texas town. For years Raya has been forced to hide her feelings for her best friend and true love, Sarah. When the two are outed, they are sent to Friendly Saviors: a re-education camp meant to “fix” them and make them heterosexual. Upon arrival, Raya vows to assume the mythic role of Orpheus to escape Friendly Saviors, and to return to the world of the living with her love—only becoming more determined after she, Sarah, and Friendly Saviors’ other teen residents are subjected to abusive… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Transmisia
Deadnaming & misgendering
Lesbomisia & lesbomisic slurs
Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Outing
Conversion therapy (theme)
Nonconsensual electroshock therapy of a minor
Nightmares
Attempted suicide
Self harm
Starvation
Torture
Car accident
Animal death

Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara Larson

Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson

Zuhra and Inara have grown up in the Citadel of the Paladins, an abandoned fortress where legendary, magical warriors once lived before disappearing from the world–including their Paladin father the night Inara was born. On that same night, a massive, magical hedge grew and imprisoned them within the citadel. Inara inherited their father’s Paladin power; her eyes glow blue and she is able to make plants grow at unbelievable rates, but she has been trapped in her own mind because of a “roar” that drowns everything else out–leaving Zuhra virtually alone with… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Child abuse
Self harm
Suicidal ideation
Starvation
Death of a parent

The Castaways by Lucy Clarke

You wake on a beautiful, remote island. Sparkling blue seas, golden sunsets, barely a footprint in the sand. Yet this is no ordinary escape. Next to the wreck of a plane, a stranger paces. Another sharpens a knife, scoring a list of the dead onto a palm tree. Others watch from the shadows of a campfire – all with untold stories, and closely-guarded secrets. This is no ordinary holiday. This is no ordinary island. This is no ordinary beach read….

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Spousal & parental abandonment
Attempted rape (on-page)
Sexual assault (unwanted non-consensual kiss, on-page)
Spousal infidelity discussed
Suicidal ideation, including an on-page scene where the protagonist begins an attempt by jumping
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Drug use and abuse mentioned
Parent with alcoholism mentioned
Starvation and food scarcity
Infertility discussed
Blood & gore depiction including physical injuries and dead bodies
Death of a lover by shark attack (off-page)
Disappearance of a sibling (theme)
Murder by drowning in self-defence from attempted rape
Attempted murder by strangulation
Near-death of an infant from choking
Plane crash (theme)
Animal hunting & butchering (mostly fish)