The Creak on the Stairs by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir 

The Creak on the Stairs by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Chief Investigating Officer Elma, who has returned to Akranes following a failed relationship, and her colleagues Sævar and Hörður, commence an uneasy investigation, which uncovers a shocking secret in the dead woman’s past that continues to reverberate in the present day. But as Elma and her team make a series of discoveries, they bring to light a host of long-hidden crimes that shake the entire community. Sifting through the rubble of the townspeople’s shattered memories, they have to dodge increasingly serious threats, and find justice … before it’s too late.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse
  • Abortion
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Death of a child recounted
  • Murder
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Extasia by Claire Legrand  

Extasia by Claire Legrand

Her name is unimportant. All you must know is that today she will become one of the four saints of Haven. The elders will mark her and place the red hood on her head. With her sisters, she will stand against the evil power that lives beneath the black mountain–an evil which has already killed nine of her village’s men. She will tell no one of the white-eyed beasts that follow her. Or the faceless gray women tall as houses. Or the girls she saw kissing in the elm grove… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Sexual harassment
  • Suicide
  • Cannibalism
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Branding
  • Torture
  • Gun violence mentioned
  • Knife violence
  • Fire
  • Cults
  • Animal death (dog)
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Blessed by Tonya Hurley 

The Blessed by Tonya Hurley

What if martyrs and saints lived among us? And what if you were told you were one of them?

Meet Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy. Three lost girls, each searching for something. But what they find is Beyond Belief.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape
  • Attempted suicide recounted
  • Nonconsensual branding
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Murder
  • Torture, including the use of an Iron Maiden
  • Beheading
  • Strangulation
  • Drowning
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of the millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Forced sex work
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Famine & starvation
  • Executions
  • Imprisonment
  • Fire
  • Refugee experience
  • Death of a pet
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She lives in San Diego with a husband she adores, and they are trying to adopt a baby because they can’t have a child on their own. But the process of adoption brings to light many questions about Molly’s past and her family—the family she left behind in North Carolina twenty years before. The mother she says is dead but who is very much alive. The father she adored and whose death sent her running from the small community of Morrison’s Ridge. Her own birth mother whose mysterious presence in her family raised so many… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Assisted suicide
  • Infertility
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

Riley MacPherson has spent her entire life believing that her older sister Lisa committed suicide as a teenager. Now, over twenty years later, her father has passed away and she’s in New Bern, North Carolina cleaning out his house when she finds evidence to the contrary. Lisa is alive. Alive and living under a new identity. But why exactly was she on the run all those years ago, and what secrets are being kept now? As Riley works to uncover the truth, her discoveries will put into question everything she thought… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Child sexual abuse resulting in pregnancy recounted
  • Suicide
  • Sibling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

On a dark midwinter night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Kidnapping
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Toll by Neal Shusterman

The Toll by Neal Shusterman

It’s been three years since Rowan and Citra disappeared; since Scythe Goddard came into power; since the Thunderhead closed itself off to everyone but Grayson Tolliver.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Self-harm
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Gun violence
  • Stabbing
  • Poisoning
  • Fire
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror
  • Murder
  • Animal death
  • Holocaust concentration camps mentioned
Support Us at Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com