Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

When a letter arrives for unhappy but ordinary Harry Potter, a decade-old secret is revealed to him that apparently he’s the last to know. His parents were wizards, killed by a Dark Lord’s curse when Harry was just a baby, and which he somehow survived. Leaving his unsympathetic aunt and uncle for Hogwarts, a wizarding school brimming with ghosts and enchantments, Harry stumbles upon a sinister mystery when he finds a three-headed dog guarding a room on the third floor. Then he hears of a missing stone with astonishing powers which could be valuable, dangerous – or both. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Classism
  • Racism
  • Graphic emotional, verbal & physical child abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Nightmares
  • Self-sacrifice
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Minor blood depiction & physical injuries
  • Infirmary
  • Blood drinking
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother & father
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Explosion
  • Car accident mentioned
  • Genocide and war themes recounted
  • Animal cruelty
  • Animal death
  • Bullying

If you choose to support this novel or author, please reconsider. You can read about the harmful cultural appropriation here, about how she is endangering trans people here, and donate to the queer Indigenous charity Black Rainbow here.

A Darkly Beating Heart by Lindsay Smith

A Darkly Beating Heart by Lindsay Smith

No one knows what to do with Reiko. She is full of hatred. All she can think about is how to best hurt herself and the people closest to her. After a failed suicide attempt, Reiko’s parents send her from their Seattle home to spend the summer with family in Japan to learn to control her emotions. But while visiting Kuramagi, a historic village preserved to reflect the nineteenth-century Edo period, Reiko finds herself slipping back in time into the life of Miyu, a young woman even more bent on revenge than Reiko herself. Reiko loves being Miyu, until she discovers the secret of Kuramagi village, and must face down Miyu’s demons as well as her own.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Lesbomisia
  • Misogyny
  • Depression
  • Self harm
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Overdose mentioned
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Pasadena by Sherri L Smith

Pasadena by Sherri L. Smith

Bad things happen everywhere. Even in the land of sun and roses.

When Jude’s best friend is found dead in a swimming pool, her family calls it an accident. Her friends call it suicide. But Jude calls it what it is: murder. And someone has to pay.

Now everyone is a suspect—family and friends alike. And Jude is digging up the past like bones from a shallow grave. Anything to get closer to the truth. But that’s the thing about secrets. Once they start turning up, nothing is sacred. And Jude’s got a few skeletons of her own.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Antiziganism (g slur)
  • Rape recounted
  • Suicide
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder discussed
  • Stalking
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Intimations by Zadie Smith

Intimations by Zadie Smith

There will be many books written about the year 2020: historical, analytic, political and comprehensive accounts. This is not any of those—the year isn’t half-way done. What I’ve tried to do is organize some of the feelings and thoughts that events, so far, have provoked in me, in those scraps of time the year itself has allowed. These are above all personal essays: small by definition, short by necessity.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Hate crimes
  • Suicide & suicidal ideation
  • Pandemic (COVID-19)
  • Gun violence
  • Police brutality
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

When the Truth Unravels by RuthAnne Snow

When the Truth Unravels by RuthAnne Snow

Last month, Elin tried to kill herself. She knows she’s lucky that her parents found her in time. Lucky to be going to prom with her three best friends. Like it never happened. And if she has anything to say about it, no one but her best friends will ever know it did.

Jenna, Rosie, and Ket will do anything to make sure it never happens again. That’s why they’re determined to make prom the perfect night. The night that convinces Elin that life is worth living. Except, at prom, Elin goes missing.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Depression
  • Attempted suicide
  • Blackmail
  • Disappearance of a friend
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Magic Study by Maria V Snyder

Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder

Yelena is a survivor. Kidnapped as a child, held prisoner as a teen, then released to act as a poison taster, she is now a student of magic. But these magic skills place her in imminent danger, and with an execution order on her head, she has no choice but to escape to Sitia, the land of her birth.

But nothing in Sitia is familiar. As she struggles to understand where she belongs and how to control her powers, a rogue magician emerges – and Yelena catches his eye. Suddenly she is embroiled in a situation not of her making. And once again her magical abilities will either save her life… or be her downfall.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape recounted
  • Sexual assault
  • Attempted suicide mentioned
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Torture
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Eighteen-year-old twins Adina and Tovah have little in common besides their ambitious nature. Viola prodigy Adina yearns to become a soloist where overachiever Tovah awaits her acceptance to Johns Hopkins, the first step on her path toward med school. But one thing could wreck their carefully planned futures: a genetic test for Huntington’s. It’s turned their Israeli mother into a near stranger and fractured the sisters’ own bond in ways they’ll never admit.

When the results come in, one twin tests negative for Huntington’s. The other tests positive.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Social anxiety
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Huntington’s Disease
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes. To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future – outside the woods.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Ableism
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Hallucinations
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Nonconsensual drugging
  • Forced sterilization
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Graphic childbirth
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Burns
  • Death of a child & infant
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Fire
  • Drowning
  • Poisoning
  • Cult
  • Graphic animal death
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Attempted suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • PTSD & trauma
  • Physical injuries & illness
  • Blood depiction
  • Emesis
  • Pregnancy mentioned
  • Starvation
  • Drowning
  • War themes
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia & misgendering
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Graphic rape
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Child sexual abuse implied
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Self harm
  • Abortion
  • Forced sterilization
  • Medical procedures, including graphic surgery & amputation
  • Needles
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Police brutality
  • Torture
  • Lynching
  • Fire
  • Captivity
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com