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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 Deadfall

anchored on:thriller & suspenseamnesiaour worldcontemporarytenseyoung adult+4 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 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 Apocalypse
                  Apocalypse

                  Tim Bowler · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterioussurvivalidentityyoung adult

                  Apocalypse is a young adult novel written by British author Tim Bowler. It was originally released in 2004 in the UK. The book deals with teenage Kit trying to find his parents after a storm blows them onto an island in which the local community is hostile and a mysterious man who resembles him in every detail in a series of events that turn his world upside down.

                • Cover of Before I Go to Sleep
                  Before I Go to Sleep

                  S. J. Watson · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bythriller & suspensecontemporarytenseamnesiamysteriousidentity

                  Before I Go to Sleep is the first novel by S. J. Watson, published in the spring of 2011. It became both a Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 40 languages. It has become a bestseller in France, Canada, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. It reached number 7 on the U.S. bestseller list, the highest position for a debut novel by a British author since J. K. Rowling. The New York Times described the author as an "out-of-nowhere literary sensation". He wrote the novel between shifts whilst working as a National Health Service (NHS) audiologist.

                • Cover of Deception Point
                  Deception Point

                  Dan Brown · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterious

                  Deception Point is a 2001 mystery-thriller novel by American author Dan Brown. It is Brown's third novel. It was published by Simon & Schuster.

                • Cover of Departure
                  Departure

                  A. G. Riddle · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterioussurvival+1 more

                  "The world's past and future rests in the hands of five unwitting strangers in this definitive edition of A. G. Riddle's time-traveling, mind-bending speculative thriller. En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they've crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home? Five passengers seem to hold clues about what's really going on: writer Harper Lane, venture capitalist Nick Stone, German genetic researcher Sabrina Schroeder, computer scientist Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, the son of a billionaire philanthropist.As more facts about the crash emerge, it becomes clear that some in this group know more than they're letting on--answers that will lead Harper and Nick to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy involving their own lives. As they begin to piece together the truth, they discover they have the power to change the future and the past--to save our world. or end it. A wildly inventive and propulsive adventure full of hairpin twists, Departure is a thrilling tale that weaves together power, ambition, fate, memory, and love, from a bold and visionary talent"--

                • Cover of Feedback
                  Feedback

                  D. L. Richardson · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysteriousidentityyoung adult+1 more

                  ● "Three teenagers have one thing in common: they're kidnapped two weeks after receiving life-saving organ transplants. Their abductor is a man who believes the memories of the host are retained in the organs. Extracting these memories is just the beginning. Something else is awakening inside their minds. If they trust this voice they might save the world. But it might also get them killed." ― paraphrased from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2024-04-03.

                • Cover of The Fear Index
                  The Fear Index

                  Robert Harris · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterious

                  A computer designed for stock trading becomes sentient.

                • Cover of The Lost Mind
                  The Lost Mind

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar bythriller & suspensecontemporarytenseamnesiamysteriousidentityyoung adult

                  She awoke in the woods beside a dead body. There was a knife in her hand, blood on her clothes. Had she killed the young woman who lay beside her? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything. Not even her own name. It was as if someone had stolen her mind. Stolen her soul.

                • Cover of The Wrong Reflection
                  The Wrong Reflection

                  Gillian Bradshaw · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytenseamnesiamysteriousidentity

                  Paul Anderson has no idea who he is. He has no memory of working for Stellar Research. He has no recollection of the accident that caused his condition. There’s only one thing he knows for sure – he is not Paul Anderson. He is a man with no past and no future. He remembers nothing about his work at Stellar except elusive images from a classified project – images that threaten to tear his sanity apart. One woman believes him. Sensing a rare intelligence behind the fear in his eyes, Sandra Murray promises to help Paul discover the truth about who he is and what is happening. But sometimes, the truth is the last thing anyone wants to know. (from the back cover)

                • Cover of Remember
                  Remember

                  Eileen Cook · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporaryamnesiamysterioustenseidentityyoung adult

                  Harper, whose father's company trademarked the "Memtex" procedure for wiping out bad memories, is surprised when her father objects to her having a treatment but afterwards, she begins having strange flashes about her own life and she joins forces with Neil, one of the company's protesters, to find the truth.

                • Cover of Strangled Silence
                  Strangled Silence

                  Oisin McGann · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysteriousamnesia

                  Another brilliant story from the bestselling Oisin McGann, author of the critically acclaimed Small-Minded Giants and Ancient Appetites.When pretty, talented and very ambitious Amina Mir manages to land a newspaper work experience placement she thinks it might just be making coffee and following-up tame stories. But then, when by chance she's sent to interview Ivor MacMorris, a veteran of the war in Sinnostan who's just won millions on the lottery, but bizarrely hasn't spent a penny, things start to get interesting . . . and dangerous. Ivor thinks he's been made to forget what happened in Sinnostan. He believes false memories of how and why he lost an eye have been planted in his brain and that he's being followed by threatening faceless people. At first Amina thinks Ivor's suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, but soon Ivor, conspiracy theorist Chi Sandwith and events persuade Amina that she could have stumbled into one of the biggest and most terrifying cover-ups ever.

                • Cover of Frozen Fire
                  Frozen Fire

                  Tim Bowler · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarymysterioustenseidentity

                  Frozen Fire is a philosophical thriller about the nature of reality by Tim Bowler. The novel was first published in 2006. It introduces a mysterious boy who wants to escape his unhappy life through suicide, and a fifteen-year-old girl who only wants her brother back from wherever he has disappeared to. Frozen Fire has won several awards.

                • Cover of Good Girls Don't Die
                  Good Girls Don't Die

                  Christina Henry · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytenseamnesiasurvival

                  Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers… Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong… Maggie just wants to be home with her daughter, but she’s in a dangerous situation and she doesn’t know who put her there or why. She’ll have to fight with everything she has to survive… Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.

                • Cover of Shane Schofield
                  Shane Schofield

                  series · 5 books · 1998

                  similar bythriller & suspensecontemporarytenseour worldsurvival

                  Shane 'Scarecrow' Schofield is a US Marine captain who leads his unit through single-location, high-body-count action thrillers set in an Antarctic ice station, a disputed Pacific island, and a maximum-security prison built into a mountain, among others. Matthew Reilly's series opens with Ice Station (1998) and keeps escalating its set-pieces across Area 7, Scarecrow, Hell Island, and Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves. It's fast, gleefully over-the-top military action rather than realistic technothriller territory.

                • Cover of Dark Matter
                  Dark Matter

                  Blake Crouch · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytenseidentity

                  Jason Dessen, college physics professor, husband and father, is kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe where his counterpart had dedicated his life to inventing a method of traveling between an infinity of parallel universes.

                • Cover of Decipher
                  Decipher

                  Stel Pavlou · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterious

                  Decipher is a speculative fiction novel by British author Stel Pavlou, published in 2001 in England by Simon & Schuster and 2002 in the United States by St. Martin's Press. The novel is about a fictional linguist, Richard Scott, and an assembled team of specialists who are in a race against time to crack a code found on ancient monuments around the world before an impending cataclysm predicted in mythology can strike. The story centers on the ancient city of Atlantis and features other mythical sites such as the Hall of Records.

                • Cover of Conjured
                  Conjured

                  Sarah Beth Durst · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytenseamnesiaidentityyoung adult

                  Haunted by disturbing dreams and terrifying visions, a teenaged girl in a paranormal witness protection program must remember her past and why she has strange abilities before a magic-wielding serial killer hunts her down. Haunted by disturbing dreams and visions, a teenage girl in a paranormal witness protection program must remember her past and why she has strange abilities before a magic-wielding serial killer hunts her down. The plot contains graphic violence.

                • Cover of Code Orange
                  Code Orange

                  Caroline B. Cooney · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensesurvivalyoung adult

                  Code Orange is a 2005 young adult novel by Caroline B. Cooney. The novel won a National Science Teachers Association recommendation and has been frequently used in classrooms. The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy also marked the book as one of their Young Adults' Choices for 2007.

                • Cover of Class Trip
                  Class Trip

                  Bebe Faas Rice · standalone novel · 1993

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensesurvivalyoung adult

                  When Angie is chosen to join the in-crowd on a trip to Shadow Island, she can't believe her luck. But things go horribly wrong when a murderer with chilling determination begins to stalk them, one by one.

                • Cover of The Book of Blood and Shadow
                  The Book of Blood and Shadow

                  Robin Wasserman · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysteriousyoung adult

                  It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and a boyfriend she adored. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands. Chris was dead. Adriane couldn't speak. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also-according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone-a murderer. Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora's determined to follow the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. But Chris's murder is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

                • Cover of Recursion
                  Recursion

                  Blake Crouch · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytenseidentity

                  Recursion is a thriller science fiction novel by American writer Blake Crouch, first published in the United States in June 2019 by the Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The novel explores themes of memory, identity, and time.

                • Cover of Robert Langdon
                  Robert Langdon

                  series · 6 books · 2000

                  similar bythriller & suspensecontemporarytensemysterious

                  The Robert Langdon novel series is named after Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the novels by American author Dan Brown. Langdon is portrayed as a Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology, a fictional field related to the study of historic symbols, which is not methodologically connected to the actual discipline of semiotics. Brown's novels that feature the lead character also include historical themes and Christianity as motifs, and as a result have generated controversy. Brown states on his website that his novels are not anti-Christian, and that he is on a "constant spiritual journey" himself.

                • Cover of The Crystal Skull
                  The Crystal Skull

                  Manda Scott · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensemysterious

                  In a spellbinding blend of history, myth, and science, bestselling novelist Manda Scott unleashes a thriller that sweeps from the secrets of the Mayans to the court of a sixteenth-century queen to a shattering end-times prophecy. "It's a lump of rock, Stella; nothing more. No stone is worth dying for." Except it's not just a lump of rock. It's a blue crystal skull made by the Maya to save the world from ruin; a sapphire so perfect, so powerful that for centuries men have killed to own or destroy it.Ancient prophecies say that if the thirteen skulls already in existence are not reunited, the world will end on December 21, 2012. Cedric Owen, the skull's last Keeper, died so that it might keep its secret for the next four centuries. Now Stella Cody has found it, and someone has already tried to kill her. Like Owen, she's being hunted--but by whom?Desperate to unravel the mystery of the crystal skull, Stella must decode Cedric Owen's coded writings, sketches and ciphers no scholar has been able to unravel. What she discovers is astounding: a shocking secret prophecy...and the staggering puzzle of four terrifying creatures, thirteen precious stones, and what will happen if Cedric Owen's crystal skull falls into the wrong hands. But time is against Stella. She has only days--hours--left to uncover the only secret that may yet save the world.12.21.12The date is set. Time is running out.The end of the world starts now.From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of Ascension
                  Ascension

                  Nicholas Binge · standalone novel · 2023

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                  Ascension is a 2023 novel by Nicholas Binge, published in the UK by Harper Voyager, and in the US by Riverhead Books. It is published or forthcoming in twelve languages, and a film adaptation is in development. The novel tells the story of Harold Tunmore, a physicist, who joins a team to climb a mountain that has appeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

                • Cover of Whalefall
                  Whalefall

                  Daniel Kraus · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar bythriller & suspenseour worldcontemporarytensesurvival

                  Whalefall is a 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus about a teenage scuba diver who is swallowed by a sperm whale. Its cover art is by Will Staehle.