Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee

Meet Anna K. At seventeen, she is at the top of Manhattan and Greenwich society (even if she prefers the company of her horses and Newfoundland dogs); she has the perfect (if perfectly boring) boyfriend, Alexander W.; and she has always made her Korean-American father proud (even if he can be a little controlling). Meanwhile, Anna’s brother, Steven, and his girlfriend, Lolly, are trying to weather a sexting scandal; Lolly’s little sister, Kimmie, is struggling to recalibrate to normal life after an injury derails her ice dancing career; and Steven’s best friend, Dustin, is madly (and one-sidedly) in love with Kimmie… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Fatmisia
  • Homomisia
  • Slut shaming
  • Cheating
  • Revenge porn
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm mentioned
  • Dieting & weight discussed
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Overdose
  • Miscarriage & abortion mentioned
  • Death of a parent mentioned
  • Fatal train accident
  • Car accident
  • Animal death (horse & dog)

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That’s about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear―affordable housing lottery. They’ve won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan’s most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning architecture. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York―people are odd―but he can’t explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Antisemitism
  • Homomisic slurs
  • Gaslighting
  • Post-partum depression
  • Claustrophobia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Death of a parent
  • Infanticide mentioned
  • COVID-19 pandemic

Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonam-Young

Winnifred “Win” McNulty has always been wildly independent. Not one to be coddled for her limb difference, Win has spent most of her life trying to prove that she can do it all on her own. And, with some minor adjustments, she’s done just fine. That is until she has a one-night stand with the incredibly charming Bo, a perfect stranger. And that one night changes everything. While Bo is surprisingly elated to step up to the plate, Win finds herself unsure of whether she can handle this new challenge on her own or if she’ll need a helping hand… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation recounted
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Amputation & loss of limb (leg)
  • Cancer (remission)
  • Death of a parent from suicide recounted, off-page

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm—as long as you’re beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the foundational myths of our culture, how can a girl with a disability ever think she’ll have a happy ending?

By examining the ways that fairy tales have shaped our expectations of disability, Disfigured will point the way toward a new world where disability is no longer a punishment or impediment but operates, instead, as a way of centering a protagonist and helping them to cement their own place in a story, and from there, the world… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism (theme)
  • Sexual assault
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Stillbirth
  • Chronic illness
  • Bullying

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are Boneless Mercies – death-traders, hired to kill quickly, quietly and mercifully. It is a job for women, and women only. Men will not do this sad, dark work.
Frey has no family, no home, no fortune, and yet her blood sings a song of glory. So when she hears of a monster slaughtering men, women, and children in a northern jarldom, she decides this the Mercies’ one chance to change their fate… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Child abuse
  • Attempted forced child sex work mentioned
  • Suicide & assisted voluntary euthanasia, on-page
  • Suicidal ideation & attempted suicide recounted
  • Self-flagellation, on-page
  • Dead bodies & body parts
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Serious physical injury & illness
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child, on-page
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Death of a girlfriend recounted
  • Death of a mentor recounted
  • Death of a parent from illness recounted
  • Death of a friend, on-page
  • Graphic murder & attempted murder (theme)
  • Knife, axe & attempted murder
  • Hanging, off-page
  • Poisoning
  • Graphic drowning
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • War themes & battle scenes
  • Animal attack
  • Graphic animal death
  • Animal abuse

Moonflower by Kacen Callender

Moon has been plunged into a swill of uncertainty and confusion. They travel to the spirit realms every night, hoping never to return to the world of the living.
But when the realm is threatened, it’s up to Moon to save the spirit world, which sparks their own healing journey through the powerful, baffling, landscape that depression can cause.
From this novel’s very first utterance, author Kacen Callender puts us behind Moon’s eyes so that we, too, are engulfed by Moon’s troubling exploration through mental illness… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation

The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu

Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me…

With the lab on lockdown, Hayden is trapped with four other people… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicidal ideation

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed…. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny
  • Poverty themes
  • Racism, specifically Nazis, mentioned
  • Prejudice against Indigenous peoples mentioned
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Suicidal ideations
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Substance abuse
  • Blood depiction
  • Cancer discussed
  • Grief depiction
  • Fire
  • Murder

Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik

Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight “as long as they have to.” This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dissociation
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Amputation
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened. But there will be no turning… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape of a disabled woman resulting in pregnancy, off-page
  • Depression
  • Suicide recounted & suicidal ideation
  • Psychosis
  • Emesis
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder of a disabled woman by stoning
  • Cults & religious abuse