Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

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 Deceptions

anchored on:fantasyurban fantasyfamily secretscontemporaryparanormalmystery & detective+6 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 Cainsville
                  Cainsville

                  series · 21 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousnorth americafamily secretsurban fantasy+7 more

                • Cover of The Curse Workers
                  The Curse Workers

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporarytensefamily secretsnorth americaurban fantasyfantasy+3 more

                  Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy is set in an alternate America where 'curse work' — magic that harms or transforms through touch — is illegal, enforced through gloves and Prohibition-era-style crime families. It follows Cassel Sharpe, the only non-worker in a family of con artists and workers, as he tries to stay out of his family's schemes despite his own hidden connection to their world. The series runs from White Cat through two further novels.

                • Cover of Faerie Tale
                  Faerie Tale

                  Raymond E. Feist · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar bycontemporarytensefamily secretsnorth americasmall townurban fantasyfantasy

                  Faerie Tale is a supernatural thriller, falling within the subgenre of contemporary fantasy, by American writer Raymond E. Feist, first published in 1988.

                • Cover of Alchemy of Secrets
                  Alchemy of Secrets

                  series · 1 book · 2025

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensenorth americafantasyurban fantasymystery & detective

                  Alchemy of Secrets follows Holland St. James, a young woman convinced that magic is real, who tracks down a local urban legend called the Watch Man and is told she will die at midnight the next day unless she finds an ancient object called the Alchemical Heart. Pulled into a hidden magical Los Angeles alongside a stranger who claims her missing sister sent him to protect her, Holland has to work out who is lying to her before the clock runs out. Stephanie Garber wrote it as a standalone 2025 novel rather than the start of a numbered series.

                • Cover of The Land of Laughs
                  The Land of Laughs

                  Jonathan Carroll · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousidentitynorth americasmall townfantasy+2 more

                  WorldCat: Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn't know who he is or what he wants--in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children's tales who died at forty-four. Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France's hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France's biography. Warned in advance that France's family may oppose them, they're surprised to find France's daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page...leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake.

                • Cover of Sleep No More
                  Sleep No More

                  Aprilynne Pike · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensenorth americafantasyparanormalmystery & detectivepsychic powers+1 more

                  "Charlotte is a sixteen-year-old Oracle who is not supposed to interfere with her visions of the future, but when she foresees a classmate's murder, she realizes she must break the rules to stop the killer"-- Charlotte is a 16-yr-old Oracle who is not supposed to interfere with her visions of the future, but when she foresees a classmate's murder, she realizes she must break the rules to stop the killer. The plot contains profanity and graphic violence.

                • Cover of The Lying Game
                  The Lying Game

                  series · 6 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustenseidentityfamily secretsnorth americamystery & detective+1 more

                  The Lying Game is a series of young adult novels by Sara Shepard published by HarperTeen. The first novel in the series, The Lying Game, was released in hardcover on December 7, 2010. The series follows a teenager, Emma Paxton, who assumes the identity of her long-lost twin, Sutton Mercer, to uncover her sister’s killer.

                • Cover of The Lace Reader
                  The Lace Reader

                  Brunonia Barry · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousfamily secretsnorth americasmall townmystery & detective+1 more

                  The Lace Reader (2006) is a novel by Brunonia Barry. The novel is set in Salem, Massachusetts, the American town famous for the Salem witch trials. A crucial plot device is the Ipswich lace that the protagonist's family would make.

                • Cover of Black Dragon
                  Black Dragon

                  series · 2 books · 1983

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousnorth americafantasyurban fantasymystery & detective+1 more

                  R. A. MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon pairs Martha Macnamara, a folk musician searching for her missing daughter, with Mayland Long, a courtly stranger who reveals himself to be a dragon living in human form, as they investigate a computer-fraud scheme in 1980s San Francisco. Its low-key blend of contemporary mystery and gentle fantasy proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, Twisting the Rope, following the same pair into a new case years later.

                • Cover of The Santaroga Barrier
                  The Santaroga Barrier

                  Frank Herbert · standalone novel · 1968

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousnorth americasmall townmystery & detective+1 more

                  Santaroga seemed to be nothing more than a prosperous farm community. But there was something . .. different . .. about Santaroga. Santaroga had no juvenile delinquency, or any crime at all. Outsiders found no house for sale or rent in this valley, and no one ever moved out. No one bought cigarettes in Santaroga. No cheese, wine, beer or produce from outside the valley could be sold there. The list went on and on and grew stranger and stranger.Maybe Santaroga was the last outpost of American individualism. Maybe they were just a bunch of religious kooks... Or maybe there was something extraordinary at work in Santaroga. Something far more disturbing than anyone could imagine. (Publisher's blurb)

                • Cover of Clare Fern
                  Clare Fern

                  series · 2 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustenseparanormalmystery & detectivepsychic powers+3 more

                • Cover of Birthright
                  Birthright

                  Nora Roberts · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensefamily secretsnorth americasmall townmystery & detective

                  When five-thousand-year-old human bones are found at a construction site in the small town of Woodsboro, the news draws archaeologist Callie Dunbrook out of her sabbatical and into a whirlwind of adventure, danger, and romance. While overseeing the dig, she must try to make sense of a cloud of death and misfortune that hangs over the project--fueling rumors that the site is cursed. And she must cope with the presence of her irritating--but irresistible--ex-husband, Jake. Furthermore, when a stranger claims to know a secret about her privileged Boston childhood, she is forced to question her own past as well.

                • Cover of Don't Tell a Soul
                  Don't Tell a Soul

                  Kirsten Miller · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensefamily secretsnorth americasmall townmystery & detective

                  Summary: "Bram moves to the small town of Louth in order to help her uncle start his new inn, but when she discovers a legacy of silenced women tied to her new home, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the town's 'Dead Girl' myths"--Provided by publisher. [end quotation of CIP data]

                • Cover of The Disappearance of Emily H.
                  The Disappearance of Emily H.

                  Barrie Summy · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensenorth americasmall townparanormalmystery & detectivepsychic powers+1 more

                  Eighth-grader Raine, a new girl at Yielding Middle Schooi, uses her supernatural ability to see other people's memories to solve the disappearance of a teenaged girl.

                • Cover of The Colorado Kid
                  The Colorado Kid

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousidentitynorth americasmall townmystery & detective

                  The Colorado Kid is a mystery novel by American writer Stephen King, published by the Hard Case Crime imprint in 2005. The book was initially issued in one paperback-only edition by the specialty crime and mystery publishing house. King's next novel for Hard Case Crime was Joyland, which was published in June 2013. Hard Case Crime reissued The Colorado Kid in an illustrated paperback edition in May 2019.

                • Cover of Promise Not To Tell
                  Promise Not To Tell

                  Jennifer McMahon · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousfamily secretsnorth americasmall townparanormalmystery & detective

                  Promise Not to Tell is a 2007 mystery novel with supernatural elements written by Vermont author Jennifer McMahon. The book was released in April 2007 in the US by Harper Paperbacks. It was released in Germany by Rowohlt Verlag, under the title Das Mädchen Im Wald, in October 2007. It was released in the United Kingdom by Orion Books in 2008.

                • Cover of The Morganville Vampires
                  The Morganville Vampires

                  series · 40 books · 2006

                  completed

                  similar bycontemporarytensenorth americasmall townurban fantasyparanormal+1 more

                  The Morganville Vampires is a series of young adult urban fantasy/vampire novels written by Rachel Caine. The novels feature Claire Danvers, a student at Texas Prairie University, and her housemates in the vampire-controlled city of Morganville, Texas. While the mayor of Morganville is human, the population co-exist with a group of vampires. Morganville is also home to an unusually large number of second-hand thrift stores.

                • Cover of The Secret Circle
                  The Secret Circle

                  series · 8 books · 1992

                  similar bycontemporarytenselove trianglenorth americasmall townfantasyparanormal+1 more

                  The Secret Circle is a supernatural, young-adult series of books created by L. J. Smith. The narrative follows the character of Cassie Blake as she is initiated into a "Circle" of eleven other teenage witches and the danger that ensues when they accidentally unleash a dark force upon their town. Matters are further complicated when Cassie finds herself in a love triangle that threatens to tear the Circle apart.

                • Cover of Carrie
                  Carrie

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bycontemporarytensenorth americasmall townpsychic powers

                  In one way or another, everybody abused Carrie. This sixteen-year-old misfit was forbidden everything that was young and fun by her fanatical mother. She was teased and taunted by her classmates, misunderstood by her teachers, and given up as hopeless by almost everyone. But Carrie had a secret: She possessed terrifying telekinetic powers that could make inanimate objects move, a lighted candle fall, or a door lock. Carrie could make all kinds of startling bizarre, and malevolent things happen. (WorldCat)

                • Cover of The Body Finder
                  The Body Finder

                  series · 5 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporarytensenorth americaparanormalmystery & detectivepsychic powers+3 more

                • Cover of Castleview
                  Castleview

                  Gene Wolfe · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousnorth americasmall townfantasyurban fantasy+1 more

                  From the back cover of the first Tor paperback printing: "In the town of Castleview, Illinois, Tom Howard is murdered at the factory he manages - on the same day that Will E. Shields and his family, newly come to Castleview, arrive with a realtor in tow to see Howard's house. From an attic window, Shields glimpses the phantom castle that has given the town its name. They are discussing the house with Sally Howard when the police arrive bearing the dreadful news. Then, driving back to the motel, Shields nearly hits a gigantic horseman in the rain... beginning a series of collisions with the mythological that only Gene Wolfe could tell."

                • Cover of Draw the Dark
                  Draw the Dark

                  Ilsa J. Bick · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bycontemporarymysteriousidentityfamily secretsnorth americasmall townmystery & detective

                  Seventeen-year-old Christian Cage lives with his uncle in Winter, Wisconsin, where his nightmares, visions, and strange paintings draw him into a mystery involving German prisoners of war, a mysterious corpse, and Winter's last surviving Jew.

                • Cover of There Will Be Lies
                  There Will Be Lies

                  Nick Lake · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustensefamily secretsidentitynorth america

                  "Shelby Jane Cooper is seventeen, pretty and quiet. It's just Shelby and her mom, Shaylene, a court stenographer who wears pyjama jeans, stitches tapestry, eats ice-cream for dinner and likes to keep Shelby safe. So safe she barely goes out. So safe she doesn't go to school. Because anything could happen, to a girl like Shelby. Anything. When Shelby gets knocked down by a car, it's not just her leg that's broken: Shelby's world is shattered. Her mom turns up to collect her and drives off into the night, like it's the beginning of a road trip, like two criminals on the run, like Thelma and Louise or Bonnie and Clyde. And somehow, everywhere she looks, there's a coyote watching her, talking to her, telling her not to believe. Who is Shelby Jane Cooper? If the person who keeps you safe also tells you lies, who can you trust?" (toppsta.com)

                • Cover of Master of Murder
                  Master of Murder

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar bycontemporarymysterioustenseidentitynorth americamystery & detective+1 more

                  Marvin was an eighteen-year old senior in high school. He was also America's bestselling author of teenage fiction, writing under a pen name. One day he opened a fan letter postmarked from his local town which said, "I know who you are." More letters arrive, and soon Marvin is caught up in a web of mystery more complex and frightening than his own books.