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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Aftermath

anchored on:our worldcontemporaryyoung adultparanormal

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Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of The Hollow Universe (Jessica Verday)
                  The Hollow Universe (Jessica Verday)

                  series · 4 books · 2009

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Haunt Me
                  Haunt Me

                  Liz Kessler · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bygrief and lossparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adult+1 more

                  When her family moves after a rough year, Erin feels instantly at home in her new bedroom even after she realizes that she s not the only one occupying it. As Erin becomes accustomed to Joe, the spirit of the teenage boy who lived in the room before her, she starts to sense an inexplicable connection between them. Meanwhile, Joe s brother, Olly, is trying to find a new normal since his brother passed away.

                • Cover of The Bird with the Broken Wing
                  The Bird with the Broken Wing

                  D. L. Richardson · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryfantasy+1 more

                  "When mortals make mistakes, they're forgiven. When angels make mistakes, they're forsaken." ― quoted from this book's product page on the Amazon.com website as of 2019-01-01.

                • Cover of Afterlight
                  Afterlight

                  Rebecca Lim · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bygrief and lossparanormalcontemporaryour worldyoung adult+1 more

                  Since her parents died in a freak motorbike accident, Sophie Teague's life has fallen apart. But she's just enrolled at a new high school, hoping for a fresh start. That's until Eve, a beautiful ghost in black, starts making terrifying nightly appearances, wanting Sophie to tie up some loose ends. But dealing with the dead might just involve he greatest sacrifice of all.

                • Cover of Birthright (Cate Tiernan)
                  Birthright (Cate Tiernan)

                  series · 1 book · 2014

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of The Halloween Tree
                  The Halloween Tree

                  Ray Bradbury · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryfantasy

                  Eight boys gather on Halloween night to trick-or-treat with their ninth friend, Pipkin, only Pipkin never shows, having vanished on some errand that may cost him his life. A strange, black-robed guide named Moundshroud appears to lead the boys after him, and the chase turns into a journey through the history of the holiday itself: ancient Egypt, druidic Britain, Rome, medieval Paris, and the Mexican Day of the Dead, each stop peeling back another layer of how humanity has faced death and the dark. Ray Bradbury's Halloween novel doubles as a compressed history of the holiday's origins.

                • Cover of The Time Traveler's Wife
                  The Time Traveler's Wife

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporary+1 more

                  The Time Traveler's Wife is the debut novel by American author Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003. It is a love story about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about Clare, his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences. Niffenegger, who was frustrated with love when she began the novel, wrote the story as a metaphor for her failed relationships. The tale's central relationship came to Niffenegger suddenly and subsequently supplied the novel's title. The novel has been classified as both science fiction and romance.

                • Cover of Give Up the Ghost
                  Give Up the Ghost

                  Megan Crewe · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bygrief and lossparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adult

                  Sixteen-year-old Cass's only friends are her dead sister and the school ghosts who feed her gossip that she uses to make students face up to their bad behavior, until a popular boy asks for her help and leads her to reach out to the living again.

                • Cover of The Rephaim
                  The Rephaim

                  series · 4 books · 2012

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryparanormalyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of The Night Walkers
                  The Night Walkers

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                • IU
                  Immortals Universe (Alyson Noël)

                  series · 10 books · 2009

                  similar byparanormalcontemporaryfantasyyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Vanessa Sands / Siren Trilogy
                  Vanessa Sands / Siren Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

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                • Cover of Book of Lies
                  Book of Lies

                  Teri Terry · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adult+2 more

                  "Twin teen girls with very different upbringings meet for the first time at their mother's funeral. As they get to know each other, it becomes clear that one of the sisters is driven by a secret destructive power-or is it both?"--

                • Cover of Into the Grey
                  Into the Grey

                  Celine Kiernan · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasy

                  Fifteen-year-old Patrick Finnerty races to save his twin brother, Dom, who is being possessed by a ghost.

                • Cover of Raised by Wolves
                  Raised by Wolves

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar byparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasywerewolves

                • Cover of The Blood Journals
                  The Blood Journals

                  series · 2 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporaryyoung adultfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of Full Tilt
                  Full Tilt

                  Neal Shusterman · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasy

                  When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra.

                • Cover of Shade (Jeri Smith-Ready)
                  Shade (Jeri Smith-Ready)

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar byparanormalcontemporaryour worldyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Teardrop Trilogy
                  Teardrop Trilogy

                  series · 2 books · 2013

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of Soul Tracker
                  Soul Tracker

                  Bill Myers · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar bygrief and lossparanormalour worldcontemporaryfantasy

                  What if you could visit heaven and hell, traveling when and wherever you wish . . . without ever dying? What if your teenage daughter, the joy of your life, had died a tragic death and you discovered a way to visit her?What if there were people and beings, on both sides of the grave, who want to stop your return?These are the questions facing novelist David Kauffman. As a single parent he is devastated when his young daughter meets an untimely death. Desperate to contact her, he meets Gita Patekar, a beautiful and committed Christian with a scarred and shame-ridden past. She works for “Life After Life”—an organization dedicated to tracking and recording the experiences of the soul once it leaves the body. Despite Gita’s warnings that God is opposed to contacting the dead, David uses the organization’s computer to try to find his daughter. In the process they discover Gita’s organization has some very deep and dark secrets.

                • Cover of Teen Spirit
                  Teen Spirit

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bygrief and lossparanormalour worldcontemporaryyoung adult+1 more

                  "Julie wanted nothing more than to feel connected to her deceased grandmother, but when she actually makes contact with the other side it's not her grandmother that responds, but a spirit that has its own sinister agenda"--

                • Cover of A Song for Ella Grey
                  A Song for Ella Grey

                  David Almond · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasy

                  A modern retelling of the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus.

                • Cover of Darkhenge
                  Darkhenge

                  Catherine Fisher · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryyoung adultfantasy

                  Worried about his sister Chloe's comatose state after a riding accident, teenage Rob, in an effort to distract himself, gets a job on a secretive local archeological dig.

                • Cover of Fluke
                  Fluke

                  James Herbert · standalone novel · 1977

                  similar bygrief and lossour worldcontemporaryfantasy

                  A dog named Fluke is barely more than a puppy when fragments of a life that isn't his own surface in his mind -- memories of a wife, a daughter, a job, an entire human existence he can't reconcile with the body he's now living in. Driven by those memories, Fluke sets out to find the family he half-remembers, aided by Rumbo, another dog going through the same impossible transformation. James Herbert follows the journey from a dog's-eye view of the world, using Fluke's confusion and determination to ask what, if anything, survives of a person after death. A standalone novel by James Herbert, better known for straightforward horror.