Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

What will become of our self-destructed planet

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Misogyny
  • Eugenics
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Take Down by Jess Anastasi

Take Down by Jess Anastasi

Attraction sizzles when Danny Jones sets eyes on Deputy Jake Perez, despite meeting over the discovery of a mutilated corpse. But being with Jake could cost Danny his family, and being with Danny could cost Jake the very thing that brought him to Everness, Texas—revenge against the man who killed his brother. How much will Jake sacrifice to take down a psychotic criminal and finally see justice served?

After college, Danny thrived as a gay man in Houston. But when his mom’s cancer brings him back to small, conservative Everness, he must go back into the closet or risk the wrath of his abusive father—a choice made even harder when Danny starts to see a future for him and Jake… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & white supremacy mentioned
  • Homomisia
  • Outing
  • Physical & verbal parental abuse
  • Parent with breast cancer
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother
  • Murder
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Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter

Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter

Also known as Skin Privilege.

Sara Linton–resident medical examiner/pediatrician in Grant County, Georgia, –has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara’s help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all.

But soon Sara and Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day–until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Rape recounted
  • Drug abuse
  • Abortion mentioned
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Explosion
  • Car accident
  • Fire & immolation
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The Last Window by Karin Slaughter

The Last Window by Karin Slaughter

On a hot summer night, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control is grabbed by unknown assailants in a shopping center parking lot. Vanished into thin air, the authorities are desperate to save the doctor.

One month later, the serenity of a sunny Sunday afternoon is shattered by the boom of a ground-shaking blast—followed by another seconds later. One of Atlanta’s busiest and most important neighborhood’s has been bombed—the location of Emory University, two major hospitals, the FBI headquarters, and the CDC… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Homomisia
  • Misogyny
  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Rape
  • Paedophilia
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Blood depiction
  • Bioterrorism & terrorism
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a spouse recounted
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Explosion
  • Mass shooting
  • Suffocation
  • Poisoning
  • Kidnapping
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Adequate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden

Adequate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden

Adaquate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden book cover

Each new school year brings familiar challenges to Brae Hill Valley, a struggling high school in one the biggest cities in Texas. But the teachers also face plenty of personal challenges and this year, they may finally spill over into the classroom.

English teacher Lena Wright, a spoken-word poet, can never seem to truly connect with her students. Hernan D. Hernandez is confident in front of his biology classes, but tongue-tied around the woman he most wants to impress. Down the hall, math teacher Maybelline Galang focuses on the numbers as she struggles to parent her daughter, while Coach Ray hustles his troubled football team toward another winning season. Recording it all is idealistic second-year history teacher Kaytee Mahoney, whose anonymous blog gains new readers by the day as it drifts ever further from her in-class reality. And this year, a new superintendent is determined to leave his own mark on the school—even if that means shutting the whole place down.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny and sexism
  • Classim
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Slut-shaming
  • Body-shaming
  • Victim blaming
  • Child sexual assault
  • Statutory rape
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Verbal abuse
  • Workplace harassment
  • Estrangement
  • Anxiety attacks
  • Depression
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Abortion
  • Physical injuries
  • Poverty themes
  • White supremacy
  • Blackmail
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People Kill People by Ellen Hopkins

People Kil People by Ellen Hopkins

A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?

One tense week brings all six people into close contact in a town wrought with political and personal tensions. Someone will fire. And someone will die. But who?

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & white supremacy
  • Rape & attempted rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Teen pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Knife violence & stabbing
  • Gun violence (theme)
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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.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

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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