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

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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 Demon Lore

anchored on:our worldcontemporaryurban fantasy

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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 Vampire Huntress Legend
                  Vampire Huntress Legend

                  series · 15 books · 2003

                  completed

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryparanormal+4 more

                  L. A. Banks's Vampire Huntress Legend opens with Minion, introducing Damali Richards, a spoken-word artist and martial artist who moonlights as a vampire hunter. The urban fantasy series follows Damali across thirteen novels as she confronts escalating supernatural threats.

                • Cover of Anita Blake
                  Anita Blake

                  series · 42 books · 1993

                  similar bytenseurban fantasycontemporarynorth america+2 more

                  Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is a series of urban fantasy novels, short stories, and comic books by Laurell K. Hamilton. The books have sold more than six million copies; many have made The New York Times Best Seller list.

                • Cover of Jill Kismet
                  Jill Kismet

                  series · 8 books · 2008

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporarydemonsmonster hunting+3 more

                • Cover of The Dresden Files
                  The Dresden Files

                  series · 56 books · 2000

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporarynorth america+2 more

                  The Dresden Files is an urban fantasy series written by American author Jim Butcher. The novels are narrated from the first-person perspective of Harry Dresden, a private detective and wizard, as he investigates supernatural disturbances in contemporary Chicago. The first entry, Storm Front, was published in 2000 by Roc Books.

                • Cover of The Hollows
                  The Hollows

                  series · 39 books · 2004

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporarydemonsnorth america+3 more

                  The Hollows is a series of urban fantasy novels by Kim Harrison, originally published by HarperCollins Publishers and by Ace Books since 2020. The series includes 18 novels, numerous novellas and short stories, two graphic novels, and one compendium resource; a 19th novel, Absolute Demon, is forthcoming in 2027.

                • Cover of Jaz Parks
                  Jaz Parks

                  series · 11 books · 2007

                  completed

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporary+4 more

                • Cover of Felix Castor
                  Felix Castor

                  series · 7 books · 2006

                  similar bytenseurban fantasycontemporarydemons+1 more

                  Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels follow a freelance exorcist working London's supernatural underside, taking paying jobs to banish ghosts and bind demons in a city where the dead don't always stay quiet. The opener, The Devil You Know, sends Castor into a museum haunting that spirals into a hunt by rival ghosts and demons all keen to be the one that finally kills him. Across six books the series mixes hardboiled detective plotting with occult horror.

                • Cover of Angel
                  Angel

                  series · 38 books · 1999

                  part of Buffyverse

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporarynorth americaparanormal+3 more

                • Cover of Meena Harper
                  Meena Harper

                  series · 2 books · 2010

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporarymonster huntingnorth america+3 more

                • OG
                  Otherworld (Yasmine Galenorn)

                  series · 50 books · 2006

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of Mookie Pearl
                  Mookie Pearl

                  series · 2 books · 2013

                  similar bytenseurban fantasycontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of Lily Bound
                  Lily Bound

                  series · 1 book · 2017

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour worldnorth americaparanormal+2 more

                • Cover of SPI Files
                  SPI Files

                  series · 8 books · 2013

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world+1 more

                • Cover of Lizzie Grace
                  Lizzie Grace

                  series · 12 books · 2017

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world+1 more

                • Cover of Hunter Kiss
                  Hunter Kiss

                  series · 8 books · 2007

                  similar byurban fantasydemonsmonster huntingcontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of The Dark Forgotten
                  The Dark Forgotten

                  series · 7 books · 2009

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of Deadtown
                  Deadtown

                  series · 6 books · 2009

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryparanormal+4 more

                • Cover of Dorina Basarab, Dhampir
                  Dorina Basarab, Dhampir

                  series · 12 books · 2007

                  part of Cassandra Palmer

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world+2 more

                  Karen Chance's Dorina Basarab novellas spin off her Cassandra Palmer urban-fantasy universe to follow Dory, a dhampir - half-vampire, half-human - who hunts rogue vampires and other supernatural threats through a modern world of vampire senates and old-world power politics. Starting with Midnight's Daughter, the stories lean on Dory's short temper and violent competence, and her fraught relationship with her vampire father, rather than the longer per-book plots of the parent series. Several entries were released as shorter novellas and ebook-first stories rather than full novels.

                • Cover of Otherworld (Kelley Armstrong)
                  Otherworld (Kelley Armstrong)

                  series · 100 books · 1996

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour worldnorth americaparanormal+1 more

                  Women of the Otherworld is Kelley Armstrong's long-running urban fantasy series about werewolves, witches, sorcerers, and other supernatural beings trying to pass as ordinary people in the contemporary world, told across thirteen novels plus assorted novellas published between 2001 and 2012. Each book tends to follow a different member of this hidden community while slowly building a shared, continuing world.

                • Cover of Sandman Slim
                  Sandman Slim

                  series · 15 books · 2009

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world+3 more

                  Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim follows James Stark, a magician who spent eleven years trapped fighting in Hell before escaping back to a Los Angeles that isn't much friendlier, looking for revenge against the circle that sent him there. Getting it turns out to mean picking up unwanted allies, including a severed talking head, and getting dragged into schemes run by both Heaven and Hell that have nothing to do with his own plans. The series keeps Stark as a foul-mouthed, magic-augmented antihero across thirteen increasingly baroque supernatural-noir books.

                • Cover of Ethan Drake
                  Ethan Drake

                  series · 12 books · 2019

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world

                • Cover of The Phoenix Chronicles
                  The Phoenix Chronicles

                  series · 7 books · 2008

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporary+5 more

                • Cover of Steel & Stone
                  Steel & Stone

                  series · 7 books · 2014

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporaryour world

                • Cover of Jack Nightingale
                  Jack Nightingale

                  series · 39 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporary+6 more

                  Jack Nightingale opens as a former police negotiator turned private detective who inherits a mansion from a man claiming to be his real father — along with a warning that his soul was sold before birth and will be claimed on his 33rd birthday. Stephen Leather's series follows Nightingale as people around him start dying in increasingly inexplicable ways, forcing a skeptic into treating the occult threat as real. Later books, some co-written with other authors, keep Nightingale investigating supernatural cases across a long-running run of novels and short story collections.