The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When a recent arrival from Virginia tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • White supremacy & the Klu Klux Klan
  • Slavery
  • Rape & sexual assault
  • Paedophilia
  • Domestic violence
  • PTSD
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Sterilization
  • Murder
  • Lynching
  • Whipping
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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray is a beautiful yet corrupt man. When he wishes that a perfect portrait of himself would bear the signs of ageing in his place, the picture becomes his hideous secret, as it follows Dorian’s own downward spiral into cruelty and depravity.

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Misogyny
  • Suicide
  • Murder
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Nailbiter Vol. 1: There Will Be Blood by Joshua Williamson & Mike Henderson

Nailbiter, Vol. 1: There Will Be Blood by Joshua Williamson & Mike Henderson

“Where do serial killers come from?” and why has Buckaroo, Oregon given birth to sixteen of the most vile serial killers in the world?

NSA Agent Nicholas Finch needs to solve that mystery in order to save his friend, and he’ll have to team up with the infamous Edward “Nailbiter” Warren to do it.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual harassment
  • Suicide mentioned & on-page attempted suicide
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Hospital
  • Cannibalism
  • Dismemberment & amputation
  • Nonconsensual body modifications
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Torture
  • Gun violence
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Hanging
  • Kidnapping
  • Imprisonment
  • Fire
  • Graphic animal dead bodies
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Yesternight by Cat Winters

Yesternight by Cat Winters

In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child. Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Sexual assault*
  • Hallucinations & delusions
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder
  • Drowning

*Context : The protagonist consents to sex if the love interest does not ejaculate inside her. He does without her permission.

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Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden book cover

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn’t think–she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with “the smiling man,” a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price. 

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she’s been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn’t have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.” Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie’s previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN. 

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver’s warning. As the trio head out into the woods–bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them–the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: “Avoid large places. Keep to small.” 

And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableist language
  • Nightmares
  • Suicide, mentioned
  • Mild blood and injury
  • Grief depiction
  • Death of a mother, mentioned
  • Death of a husband, mentioned
  • Death of a father, mentioned
  • Death of a brother, mentioned
  • Death of a child, mentioned
  • Murder
  • Fire
  • Plane crash
  • Disappearance of a loved one, recounted
  • Bullying
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The Power by Naomi Alderman

The Power by Naomi Alderman

The Power by Naomi Alderman book cover

In The Power the world is a recognisable place: there’s a rich Nigerian kid who lounges around the family pool; a foster girl whose religious parents hide their true nature; a local American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power – they can cause agonising pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.

This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world. 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexual assault
  • Rape
  • Forced suicide, by throat slitting
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Torture
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Tight Quarters by Annabeth Albert

Tight Quarters by Annabeth Albert

Tight Quarters by Annabeth Albert book cover

Petty Officer Bacon, a navy SEAL and ace sharpshooter, has been on the front lines of more than his fair share of dangerous ops. Yet when a minor injury relegates him to the beta team, he’s tasked with what may be his riskiest assignment yet: the silver fox journalist he’s babysitting is the hottest, most charismatic man he’s ever encountered.

Award-winning journalist Spencer Bryant may have been named one of Pride magazine’s most eligible bachelors of the year, but he’s not looking to change his relationship status. He’s a consummate professional who won’t risk his ethics or impeccable reputation by getting involved with a source. Even a sexy-as-hell military man. But while Spencer can resist his physical attraction to Bacon, he has less control over his emotions—especially when the mission goes sideways and the two men are trapped alone.

Getting out of the jungle alive turns out to be easy compared to facing the truth about their feelings for one another back in the real world. And whether or not they can build a future is a different story altogether.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Suicide, mentioned
  • Physical injury
  • Gun violence
  • War themes
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Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin

Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin

Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin book cover

Elle and her friends Mads, Jenny, and Summer rule their glittering LA circle. Untouchable, they have the kind of power other girls only dream of. Every party is theirs and the world is at their feet. Until the night of Elle’s sweet sixteen, when they crash a St. Andrew’s Prep party. The night the golden boys choose Elle as their next target.

They picked the wrong girl.

Sworn to vengeance, Elle transfers to St. Andrew’s. She plots to destroy each boy, one by one. She’ll take their power, their lives, and their control of the prep school’s hierarchy. And she and her coven have the perfect way in: a boy named Mack, whose ambition could turn deadly.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Transmisia
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Abusive relationship
  • Substance abuse
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Gore depiction
  • Murder
  • Bullying
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Remembrance by Meg Cabot

Remembrance by Meg Cabot

Remembrance by Meg Cabot book cover

You can take the boy out of the darkness. But you can’t take the darkness out of the boy.

All Susannah Simon wants is to make a good impression at her first job since graduating from college (and since becoming engaged to Dr. Jesse de Silva). But when she’s hired as a guidance counselor at her alma mater, she stumbles across a decade-old murder, and soon ancient history isn’t all that’s coming back to haunt her. Old ghosts as well as new ones are coming out of the woodwork, some to test her, some to vex her, and it isn’t only because she’s a mediator, gifted with second sight. 

What happens when old ghosts come back to haunt you?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Sexual assault, recounted
  • Paedophilia
  • Suicide
  • Drug use
  • Death of a child
  • Murder and attempted murder
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The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown

The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown

The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown book cover

Sydney’s dad is the only psychiatrist for miles around their small Ohio town.

He is also unexpectedly dead.

Is Sydney crazy, or is it kind of weird that her dad-a guy whose entire job revolved around other peoples’ secrets-crashed alone, with no explanation?

And why is June Copeland, homecoming queen and the town’s golden child, at his funeral?

As the two girls grow closer in the wake of the accident, it’s clear that not everyone is happy about their new friendship.

But what is picture perfect June still hiding? And does Sydney even want to know?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Queermisia
  • Forced coming out
  • Sexual abuse, off-page
  • Domestic abuse, emotional and physical
  • Verbal abuse
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Bullying, central theme
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