Body Horror – Trigger Warning Database

Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson

The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake. Answering Campion’s distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths. Soon a sinister mystery unfolds aboard the gigantic vessel, one that will have repercussions for the entire system—from the scheming politicians of Lagos station, to the colony planet Bloodroot, to other far-flung systems, and indeed to Earth itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Cannibalism
Dismemberment
Body horror
Murder
Colonialism

The Fallen by Charlie Higson

First the sickness rotted the adults’ minds. Then their bodies. Now they stalk the streets, hunting human flesh. The Holloway crew are survivors. They’ve fought their way across London and made it to the Natural History Museum alive – just. But the fight will never end while the Enemy lives, unless there’s another way…The kids at the museum are looking for a cure. All they need are medical supplies. To get them means a journey down unknown roads. Roads where not only crazed, hungry sickos hide in the shadows. Suddenly it’s not so clear who – or what – they’re fighting.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Blood & gore depiction including body horror and cannibalism
Death of a child
Animal death

Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, Vol. 3: Kotsuga & Ryu by Masashi Kishimoto and Akira Okubo

A futuristic tale of samurai adventure from the creator of Naruto! Becoming a samurai seems like an impossible dream for Hachimaru, a boy who can’t even survive without the help of his father. But when a samurai cat appears before him, his whole life changes! A legendary manga creator and a rising star come together to bring you this science fiction samurai epic!

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Suicide & self-harm
Body horror

The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they’re certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days. And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job. Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty. Megafauna roam the land, a rival crew with some terrifyingly high-powered gear haunts the dig site, and a secret that will… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Indentured servitude
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Body horror
Medical experimentation
Animal death & hunting

Salt Magic by Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock

When Vonceil’s older brother, Elber, comes home to their family’s Oklahoma farm after serving on the front lines of World War I, things aren’t what she expects. His experiences have changed him into a serious and responsible man who doesn’t have time for Vonceil anymore. He even marries the girl he had left behind. Then a mysterious and captivating woman shows up at the farm and confronts Elber for leaving her in France. When he refuses to leave his wife, she puts a curse on the family well, turning the entire town’s water supply into saltwater. Who is this lady dressed all… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Cheating mentioned
Body horror (characters magically turned into gems)
Imprisonment
Threats of gun violence to a child
Animal attack (snake), including death from snakebite

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & eugenics
Medical experimentation & body horror (on-page)
Death of a grandmother from cancer recounted
Financial difficulties (theme)

We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado

Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove. However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Associ… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & homophobia
Child abuse & neglect, including mentions of a parent slashing her child with a knife after they came out
Anxiety & alcoholism
Suicide
Death of a child
Blood & gore depiction, including minor body horror & depiction of dead bodies
Car accident
Fire

End of Days by Susan Ee

After a daring escape from the angels, Penryn and Raffe are on the run. They’re both desperate to find a doctor who can reverse the twisted changes inflicted by the angels on Raffe and Penryn’s sister. As they set off in search of answers, a startling revelation about Raffe’s past unleashes dark forces that threaten them all. When the angels release an apocalyptic nightmare onto humans, both sides are set on a path toward war. As unlikely alliances form and strategies shift, who will emerge victorious? Forced to pick sides in the fight for control of the earthly realm, Raffe and Penryn must choose: Their own kind, or each other?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Ableism & ableist language (on-page)
Disfigurmisia
Slavery
Parent with paranoid schizophrenia
Self-sacrifice
Graphic blood & injury depiction, including dead bodies, body horror, involuntary body modifications, medical experimentations, plague, eyeball trauma & loss of vision, and cannibalism
Torture & psychological torture (on-page), including mentions of being eaten & skinned alive
Murder & attempted murder
Physical assault
Gun & sword violence
Explosion
Whipping
Imprisonment, kidnapping & captivity
Building collapse recounted
Rebellion themes
Cults

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring…. In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Minor body horror
Animal death (rat, decapitated by a cat)

The Shadow Bride by Shelby Mahurin

Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves—including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire. But Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge. The fragile… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption
Graphic blood & gore depiction including blood-drinking, dead bodies, body horror & decapitation
Sword & spear violence
Torture