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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 Black Wind: (Sample)

anchored on:historical fictionwarearly 20th centurythriller & suspenseidentityeast asia+1 more

but

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 about minds with paranormal abilities — telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, empathy — and how societies handle those who have them.
  • 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 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 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 about rising against rulers — uprisings, resistance movements, and revolutions and their aftermaths.
  • 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 Jesus Factor
                  The Jesus Factor

                  Edwin Corley · standalone novel · 1970

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centurywarthriller & suspensehistorical fiction

                  The Jesus Factor is a 1970 conspiracy theory thriller novel by Edwin Corley based on the Manhattan Project of World War II and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It concerns issues relating to the "arms race" and the collective guilt of those involved with the bombings.

                • Cover of The Crook Factory
                  The Crook Factory

                  Dan Simmons · standalone novel · 1999

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centurywarthriller & suspensehistorical fiction

                  The Crook Factory is a thriller novel by American author Dan Simmons. The book was initially published by William Morrow on March 1, 1999. The novel tells a fictionalized version of the real life counter-espionage and spy ring, known as the Crook Factory, that was set up by Ernest Hemingway in Cuba during World War II.

                • Cover of 1945
                  1945

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th centuryeast asia

                  1945 is an alternate history novel by Michigan economics professor Robert Conroy, an author of alternate history novels, such as 1901 and 1862. It was first published in trade paperback and ebook form by Ballantine Books in May 2007. In the novel's point of divergence, the Kyūjō coup successfully suppresses Japanese Emperor Hirohito's order to surrender and so World War II in the Pacific continues into 1946.

                • Cover of Barney Custer
                  Barney Custer

                  series · 3 books · 1914

                  completed

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centurythriller & suspense+2 more

                  Barney Custer is an American farmer from Nebraska who travels to the small European kingdom of Lutha only to discover he's the spitting image of its unstable ruler, King Leopold. Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Mad King drops him into court intrigue on the eve of World War I, as a scheming uncle's plot for the throne and a budding romance with a princess force Barney to impersonate the king he resembles. It's a standalone Ruritanian adventure rather than an ongoing series.

                • Cover of The Burning Mountain
                  The Burning Mountain

                  Alfred Coppel · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th centuryeast asia

                  America's first atom bomb test fails and the US is forced to invade Japan in 1946.

                • Cover of Resistance
                  Resistance

                  Owen Sheers · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centurywarhistorical fiction

                  Resistance is a 2007 alternative history novel by Welsh poet and author Owen Sheers. The plot centers on the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in 1944–45, shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German counterinvasion of Great Britain. A group of German Wehrmacht soldiers stay there after men leave to serve in the covert British Resistance. The novel follows abandoned farmer's wife Sarah Lewis and German commanding officer Albrecht Wolfram, as they form an unlikely relationship in spite of their backgrounds and political standings.

                • Cover of The Devil's Voyage
                  The Devil's Voyage

                  Jack L. Chalker · standalone novel · 1981

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th centuryhistorical fiction

                  The Devil's Voyage is a historical novel by science fiction writer Jack Chalker. It describes the final voyage of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, which was sunk during World War II in the Pacific by Japanese submarine action, with the loss of many of the initial survivors to sharks.

                • Cover of The War in the Air
                  The War in the Air

                  H. G. Wells · standalone novel · 1908

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th century

                  The War in the Air: And Particularly How Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While It Lasted is a military science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells and published in 1908.

                • Cover of Glide Path
                  Glide Path

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1963

                  similar byearly 20th centuryhistorical fictionwar+1 more

                  Glide Path is a novel by the English writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1963. Clarke's only non-science fiction novel, it is set during World War II and relates a fictionalized version of the development of the radar-based ground-controlled approach aircraft landing system, and includes a character modeled on Luis Alvarez, who developed this system. It is based on Clarke's own wartime service with the Royal Air Force, during which he worked on the GCA project.

                • Cover of Ascent
                  Ascent

                  Jed Mercurio · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytensehistorical fictioneast asiawar

                  Ascent is a 2007 secret history novel by British writer Jed Mercurio. It follows the career of Yevgeni Yeremin, an orphan of Stalingrad, from his days as a MiG-15 pilot in the Korean War to his later years as a cosmonaut.

                • Cover of The Beardless Warriors
                  The Beardless Warriors

                  Richard Matheson · standalone novel · 1960

                  similar bywarearly 20th centuryhistorical fiction+1 more

                  The Beardless Warriors is a 1960 World War II novel by American writer Richard Matheson. It was based on his experiences as a young infantryman in the 87th Division in France and Germany.

                • Cover of How Few Remain Universe
                  How Few Remain Universe

                  series · 11 books · 1997

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th century

                  How Few Remain opens Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory timeline, imagining a North America where the Confederacy won the Civil War. Set mostly in 1881-1882, it follows political and military figures on both sides of a divided continent as old grievances resurface into a new war. It's a single novel here, but the starting point for a much longer alternate-history sequence Turtledove extended across both twentieth-century world wars.

                • Cover of The Kingdom of Shadows
                  The Kingdom of Shadows

                  K. W. Jeter · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centuryhistorical fictionwarthriller & suspense+1 more

                  In the sinister and glamorous world of the film industry in the Third Reich and in Hollywood, a young actress struggles not just to survive, but to unravel her own mysterious heritage. As war begins, dark conspiracies tighten around her; to escape them will require a journey through the apocalyptic landscape of Berlin's last days...

                • Cover of End of the World Blues
                  End of the World Blues

                  Jon Courtenay Grimwood · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar bytenseeast asiaidentitythriller & suspense

                  "Kit Nouveau didn't escape himself when he fled to Japan. Now running a biker bar in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, he's also sleeping with the wife of a High Yakusa ganglord. All things considered, being held up at gunpoint isn't a complete shock. The pale girl in the red cloak appearing from nowhere and punching an ivory spike into his attacker's head on the other hand." "Nijie has stolen fifteen million dollars, she's on the run, she's just killed a man and she has a cat who knows more than it should. It's a lot to deal with when you haven't even left school." "But Nijie is also Lady Neku, and in a sentient castle at the end of the world Lady Neku otherwise known as Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo. Countess High Strange and chatelaine of Schlass Omga realizes that Kit has stolen some of her memories. What happens to a man who finally realises he can't outrun himself? Kit Nouveau is about to find out."--BOOK JACKET. "Kit Nouveau figured he'd already come to the end of the world. An Iraqi war veteran, expatriate, and part owner of Pirate Mary's, the best Irish bar in Tokyo, Kit had settled down to await the inevitable with barely a whimper. It wasn't exactly how Kit thought he'd end up, and he was right." "It's going to end up a lot worse." "A teenage runaway with fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and a taste for cosplay is about to save Kit's life in a lethal swirl of scarlet and bridal lace. Lady Neku, a.k.a. Countess of High Strange, has her own dangerous destiny to fulfill and it's mysteriously connected to Kit's ravaged past. Now Kit's only hope for redemption is to save an ex-girlfriend he tragically failed once before. But everyone says it's already too late. And she's left behind only one ominous clue: her suicide note."--BOOK JACKET.

                • Cover of Days of Infamy
                  Days of Infamy

                  series · 2 books · 2004

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th century

                  Harry Turtledove's Days of Infamy duology reimagines the Pacific theater of World War II with an alternate outcome at Pearl Harbor: a Japanese invasion and occupation of Hawaii rather than a single carrier strike. Days of Infamy covers the invasion itself, while End of the Beginning follows the ensuing occupation and eventual counter-invasion. As in his other alternate-history work, Turtledove follows the changed war through a wide, rotating cast of civilian and military viewpoints.

                • Cover of Duke de Richleau
                  Duke de Richleau

                  series · 4 books · 1933

                  completed

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centurythriller & suspense

                  The Duke de Richleau novels follow Dennis Wheatley's aristocratic adventurer and occultist across four decades of twentieth-century intrigue, moving from a 1930s rescue thriller in The Forbidden Territory into Satanist set-pieces such as The Devil Rides Out and Strange Conflict, then a later case in Gateway to Hell. Wheatley wrote the books out of order over nearly forty years, but their internal chronology matches the order they were published in.

                • Cover of Birds of Prey
                  Birds of Prey

                  David Drake · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bytensehistorical fictionwar+1 more

                  Birds of Prey is a novel by science fiction / fantasy author David Drake, first published in 1984. It is related as a historical novel set in the Late Roman Empire, in the second half of the Third Century. There is a science-fictional twist to the story, starting with hints of a time warp on the very first page and slowly revealing to the reader—and the protagonist—what is really going on behind the scenes. The story is told in a very vivid style, suggestive of cinematography.

                • Cover of Himmler's War
                  Himmler's War

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th century+1 more

                  Himmler's War is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was published by Baen Books online as an ebook on December 1, 2011, before being published in print five days later.

                • Cover of Libra
                  Libra

                  Don DeLillo · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar bytensehistorical fictionidentitythriller & suspense

                  Two disgruntled CIA agents decide that an unsuccessful assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy's life, one that can be linked to Fidel Castro, is the only way to put Cuba back into geopolitical play. They choose Lee Harvey Oswald as the instrument to put their plot in motion.

                • Cover of Blood Red, Snow White
                  Blood Red, Snow White

                  Marcus Sedgwick · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bytenseearly 20th centuryhistorical fictionwar

                  Blood Red, Snow White is a historical novel by Marcus Sedgwick published in 2007. It is a novel set during the Russian Revolution, a fictionalised account of the time the author Arthur Ransome spent in Russia. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Children's Book Award.

                • Cover of The Yellow Wave
                  The Yellow Wave

                  M. P. Shiel · standalone novel · 1905

                  similar byearly 20th centuryeast asiahistorical fictionwar+1 more

                  Historical novel about the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The novel is a Romeo and Juliet story across families of the two nations.

                • Cover of Between the Wars
                  Between the Wars

                  series · 4 books · 1981

                  similar byearly 20th centuryhistorical fictionidentitywar

                  The Pyat Quartet, also known as Between the Wars, is a tetralogy of historical fiction novels by English author Michael Moorcock comprising Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, Jerusalem Commands and The Vengeance of Rome published from 1981 to 2006.

                • Cover of Sam Decker
                  Sam Decker

                  series · 2 books · 2010

                  similar bytensethriller & suspensewar+2 more

                • Cover of Red Inferno: 1945
                  Red Inferno: 1945

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bytensewarearly 20th century

                  Red Inferno: 1945 is a 2010 novel written by Robert Conroy, the author of other alternate history novels.