The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves. A female cop with her first big case, a brutal murder. Welcome to… the Thursday Murder Club

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Dementia
  • Suicide
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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave.

When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he’s drowning. She saves his life – and it will happen again and again. Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them. And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it’s even begun.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Self harm
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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed? … Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slut-shaming
  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Student-teacher relationship
  • Paedophilia, grooming & child sexual abuse
  • Rape, including statutory rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Child pornography
  • Emotional abuse & gaslighting
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Dissociation
  • Suicide
  • Substance addiction
  • Alcoholism
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Recreational drug use
  • Disordered eating
  • Death of a dog
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Hospitalisation
  • Terminal illness
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Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within. The time has come.

But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Torture
  • Genocide & mass murder
  • War themes
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The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

June 1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with the help of a team of trusted companions and a revolutionary application of the principles of his discipline. Kreizler and his friends—high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant (and bickering) detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime—have returned to their former pursuits and tried to forget the horror of the Beecham case.

But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara’s aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. It is a case fraught with danger, since Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Their investigation leads the team to a shocking suspect… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
  • Infanticide
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The Alienist by Caleb Carr

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night “New York Times” reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or “alienist.” On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan’s infamous brothels.

The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler’s intellect and Moore’s knowledge of New York’s vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Sexism
  • Racism
  • Attempted rape
  • Suicide
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The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions… 

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Anxiety
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
  • Eating disorder (anorexia)
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Suicide mentioned
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More Than This by Patrick Ness

More Than This by Patrick Ness

A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies. Then he wakes, naked and bruised and thirsty, but alive. How can this be? And what is this strange deserted place?

As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Domestic abuse
  • Suicide
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Legendary by Stephanie Garber

Legendary by Stephanie Garber

After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister, Scarlett, from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name. The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more—and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets…including her sister’s. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted rape mentioned
  • Parental abandonment & child abuse discussed
  • Suicide recounted
  • Alcohol consumption (on-page, protagonist) & mentions of smoking
  • Blood & injury depiction, including magical healing by drinking blood after a near-fatal fall into freezing water
  • Death of a fiancé mentioned
  • Death of a grandmother mentioned
  • Murder
  • Physical assault & assault with a knife
  • Imprisonment