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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 Desperado

anchored on:romancenorth america19th centurytime travelhistorical romanceenemies to lovers+2 more

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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 Kindred
                  Kindred

                  Octavia E. Butler · standalone novel · 1979

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                  Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. Widely popular, it has frequently been chosen as a text by community-wide reading programs and book organizations, and for high school and college courses.

                • Cover of Once a Pirate
                  Once a Pirate

                  Susan Grant · standalone novel · 2000

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                  Rescued from the freezing Atlantic by a pirate who has lived to plunder merchant vessels, downed fighter pilot Carly Callahan is soon falling for this unlikely hero as well. Time Travel Romance

                • Cover of Legend
                  Legend

                  Jude Deveraux · standalone novel · 1996

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                  Her wedding fast approaching, celebrated chef Kady Long knew she was the luckiest woman alive...until she slipped into a delicate satin wedding dress she found in an antique flour tin and was overcome by an odd dizzy spell. When she came to, Kady was in the dusty western town of Legend, Colorado -- where a hanging was about to commence! With quick wits and more than a little moxie, Kady halts the proceedings, much to the relief of one Cole Jordan, a tall, thankful, and very appealing man. Now it's Kady's turn to enlist his help to find a way back home. But before long, Kady discovers a passion that she knows can only live in Legend -- until Cole reveals a secret that unites them in a way Kady never could have imagined.

                • Cover of Lady Athlyne
                  Lady Athlyne

                  Bram Stoker · standalone novel · 1908

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                  "Joy Ogilvie, the beautiful young daughter of a Kentucky colonel, plays a joke with her friends, pretending to be "Lady Athlyne", after hearing a story about the dashing Irish nobleman Lord Athlyne. Little does she know that half a world away, the real Lord Athlyne is a prisoner of war in a South African camp, where word reaches him that a woman in America is impersonating his wife. Upon his release, he decides to investigate the situation and travels to New York, where a near-fatal accident introduces him to Joy and her father. Athlyne and Joy fall instantly in love-but a series of misadventures and dangerous obstacles threatens to prevent their marriage. And when Colonel Ogilvie learns of their affair and challenges Athlyne to a duel to the death, their love just may end in tragedy!" --quoting the Amazon product page for the 2007 Valancourt Books edition as of 2017-08-29

                • Cover of Fevre Dream
                  Fevre Dream

                  George R. R. Martin · standalone novel · 1982

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                  Fevre Dream is a 1982 vampire novel written by American author George R. R. Martin. It is set on the antebellum Mississippi River, beginning in 1857, and has been described by critics and Martin himself as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain". About writing the novel, Martin said that "It was strongly influenced by the time I spent in Dubuque, Iowa, where river steamboats were once built".

                • Cover of A Ghost of a Chance at Love
                  A Ghost of a Chance at Love

                  Terry Spear · standalone novel · 2011

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                  Lisa Welsh only wishes to leave a messy divorce behind for a couple of days stay in Salado, Texas but wakes to nightmares and a cowboy in her bed, and she has no earthly idea how he got there. But the situation gets worse when she learns she & apos;s now living in 19th Century Salado. Even more worrisome is the tall dark stranger, and everyone else in town believes she & apos;s some woman named Josephine Rogers who is supposed to be dead. Jack Stanton can & apos;t believe the clerk gave him an occupied room at the Shady Villa Inn, but worse, he was ready to ravage the woman in that bed-until he realized his mistake. Now the woman he thinks is Josephine claims to be some other woman-and though he could never abide by Josephine & apos;s fickle ways, this Lisa Welsh intrigues him like no other. Still, if she isn & apos;t Josephine, he figures he best help her find her way back to where she really belongs no matter how much he wants to keep her with him. Together, Lisa and Jack must solve the mysteries and face the troubles in their worlds or they will never be free to share the love that binds them across the ages.

                • Cover of Desperado's Gold
                  Desperado's Gold

                  Linda Winstead Jones · standalone novel · 1996

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                  Jilted at the altar and stranded in the Arizona desert by a blown gasket in her Mustang convertible, Catalina Lane hoped for a tow truck and a lift to the nearest gas station. She certainly didn't expect a real, live desperado, swathed in black, to appear and carry her off into the sunset. But suddenly, catapulted back in time to the days of the Old West, Catalina was transported into a world of blazing six-guns and ladies of the evening. What could she do but go along for the ride? When Jackson Cady, the infamous gunslinger known as "Kid Creede," returned to Baxter, it was to kill a man and earn a reward, not to use his gold to rescue a naïve librarian from the clutches of a greedy madam. He never would have dreamed that the beauty who babbled so incoherently about the twentieth century would have such an impact on him. But the longer he spent with her, the more he found himself captivated by her tender touch and luscious body --- and when he looked deep into her amber eyes, he knew that the passion that smoldered between them was a treasure more precious than any . . . .

                • Cover of MacLean Curse
                  MacLean Curse

                  series · 2 books · 2007

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                • Cover of Sweeter Savage Love
                  Sweeter Savage Love

                  Sandra Hill · standalone novel · 1997

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                  THE STROKE OF SURPRISINGLY GENTLE HANDS... THE FLASH OF FATHOMLESS BLUE EYES... THE SCORCH OF WHITE-HOT KISSES... And once again, Harriet Ginoza was swept away into rapturous fantasy. The up-to-date psychologist knew the object of her desire was all she should despise, yet time after time, she lost herself in visions of a dangerously handsome rogue straight out of a historical romance. As politically incorrect as her dream lover was, Harriet never believed he would cause her any trouble. Then a twist of fate cast her back to the Old South, and she met him in the flesh. But to her disappointment, Etienne Baptiste refused to ravish her -- or fulfill her other secret wishes. If Harriet had any hope of making her amorous illusions become passionate reality, she'd have to seduce the charming Creole with a sweeter savage love than she'd imagined possible ... and savor every minute of it.

                • Cover of Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands
                  Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands

                  series · 3 books · 2015

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                • Cover of Bring the Jubilee
                  Bring the Jubilee

                  Ward Moore · standalone novel · 1953

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                  From the flaps of the Farrar, Straus and Young first edition: ""Although I am writing this in the year 1877, I was not born until 1921." So Hodge Backmaker begins his story of the harsh and curious world he lived in, a world in which the South won the Civil War and the all-powerful Confederacy dominated the poor and backward North; a North that had neither a transcontinental railroad, and where television was undreamed of. Like most Northerners, Hodge was poor - but he had ambition. A printer's handyman in 1938, he had since become an eminent historian. Hodge's special interest was the American past, when the States had been united and had seemed to be on the brink of prosperity and technical progress. And then he was offered an opportunity no historian could resist - he could go back in time. Hodge chsoe to return to a certain field near Gettysburg on a day in July, 1863... Bring the Jubilee is a novel of curious events, of adventures and reflection, of passions and comment. It at time Hodge's world, its horse-carriages and gas-lights, minibles and tinugraphs and the Great Emperors' War of 1914 faintly resembles our own, it is perhaps, because that world might well become a reality: on the battlefield of Gettysburg there is a small hill called Little Round Top. One July morning in 1863 the Confederate Army made the tactical error of not occupying this hill. It was a mistake that cost them victory in a battle which - in the view of many historians - was the turning point of the Civil War."

                • Cover of Beyond the Threshold
                  Beyond the Threshold

                  series · 2 books · 1992

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                • Cover of Time-Kept Promises
                  Time-Kept Promises

                  Constance O'Day-Flannery · standalone novel · 1988

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                  Kristine Gavin was depressed about turning thirty until she received a most unusual gift from her brother. It was a portrait he'd found in the attic of their family home in Virginia, a portrait of a woman who must have been their ancestor, judging from Kris' resemblance to the beauty. But it wasn't the painting that intrigued Kris... An old newspaper clipping about the woman's strange disappearance caught within the frame drew her in. Just as Kris was uncovering a fascinating secret from the past she sensed a change in the air - and found herself thrown back in time into a strange room, staring into the eyes of the sexiest man she had ever seen! Sean O'Mara frozen when he saw his wife Christina standing before him. She had vanished and the news had been written about in all of the papers - he had even been charged with her murder! But now he had living proof of his innocence, and Sean was not about to let her get away. No matter that the woman was claiming to be someone named Kristine; she still caused his blood to boil. Yet despite their differences, Sean wanted to hold the fiery vixen in his arms, caress her satiny skin, kiss her ruby lips and pledge his love forever with TIME-KEPT PROMISES

                • Cover of Cordina's Crown Jewel
                  Cordina's Crown Jewel

                  Nora Roberts · standalone novel · 2002

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                  RUNAWAY PRINCESS For a few blessed weeks, Her Royal Highness Camilla de Cordina could be just plain Camilla MacGee. And working for Delaney Caine in Vermont's backwoods offered a perfect refuge from the press. But as her irritation toward the cantankerous archaeologist grew into fascination -- then desire -- the royal runaway knew she'd soon have to reveal herself. Del had never needed anyone, and at first he accepted Camilla's presence only grudgingly. But, as the remarkable beauty insinuated herself into Del's self-sufficient life, he found that she filled an emptiness he'd never known was there. Only, what was Camilla hiding?

                • Cover of The Boundless
                  The Boundless

                  Kenneth Oppel · standalone novel · 2014

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                  Aboard "The Boundless," the greatest train ever built, on its maiden voyage across Canada, teenaged Will enlists the aid of a traveling circus to save the train from villains.

                • Cover of Loving Jack / Jack's History
                  Loving Jack / Jack's History

                  series · 2 books · 1989

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                • Cover of Steam and Seduction
                  Steam and Seduction

                  series · 3 books · 2013

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                • Cover of The Wolf Is My Brother
                  The Wolf Is My Brother

                  Chad Oliver · standalone novel · 1967

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                  Western. Winner of the 1967 Golden Spur Award for Best Historical Novel.

                • Cover of Veins of Gold
                  Veins of Gold

                  Charlie N. Holmberg · standalone novel · 2018

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                  "Abandoned by their father for the gold rush, Gentry and her siblings labor to survive alone in the inhospitable west. When bizarre natural disasters begin wreaking havoc on the land, Gentry discovers a world of magic. Desperate for help, she accepts aid from a mysterious stranger. Winn not only sees the magic, but controls its hunger by feeding it gold--the very thing Gentry's father left to acquire. But the earth's unrest only grows worse, and Gentry's fear leads her to a terrible choice: marry a wealthy man she does not love, or trust in Winn's unpredictable power to save her family."--Amazon.com.

                • Cover of The Root Cellar
                  The Root Cellar

                  Janet Lunn · standalone novel · 1981

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                  The Root Cellar is a children's historical novel by Janet Lunn that is set in the 1980s, although much of the action takes place in the 1860s. It follows Rose Larkin, an orphan, who travels temporally back and forth between Ontario, Canada, of the 1980s and various settings of U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. This time travel is done through the root cellar of the title.

                • Cover of My Outlaw
                  My Outlaw

                  Linda Lael Miller · standalone novel · 1997

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                  Seven-year-old Keighly Barrow never forgot the night she spied a boy her own age at her grandmother's Redemption, Nevada, mansion. He was staring back at her form an antique mirror in the ballroom, standing among gaudily dressed women in an old-time western saloon. Keighly could only discover that his name was Darby Elder--and that he lived a century ago. Twenty years later, engaged to be married, Keighly inherited her grandmother's house. Back before the ballroom mirror, she faces a handsome cowboy whose roughish air radiates trouble. Keighly senses the spirit of Darby Elder--along with an electric charge of passion passing through the glass and into her heart. But old news clips declare this outlaw son of a local madam would die in a shoot-out. Keighly's magical connection to Darby is too strong not to try and save his life--or, if history will not bend, to love him as fiercely as the fleeting moments will allow....

                • Cover of In the Shadow of the Moon
                  In the Shadow of the Moon

                  Karen White · standalone novel · 2000

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                  "The arrival of a comet plunges Laura Truitt back in time more than one hundred years and into the arms of Stuart Elliott, a dashing Confederate officer, but the turmoil and danger of the Civil War threaten to separate them forever." (source: amazon.com)

                • Cover of An Accidental Goddess
                  An Accidental Goddess

                  Linnea Sinclair · standalone novel · 2002

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                  From the back cover of the Bantam paperback: "Raheiran Special Forces captain Gillaine Davre has just woken up in some unknown space station, wondering where the last three hundred years have gone. The last thing she remembers is her ship being attacked. Now it seems that while she was time-traveling, she was ordained a goddess... Gillaine's only home of survival rests with dangerously seductive Admiral Mack Makarian, who suspects her of being a smuggler - or worse. But he can't begin to imagine the full extent of it. For Gillaine is now Lady Kiasidira, holy icon of countless believers, including Mack - a man who inspires feelings in her that are far from saintly... feelings she knows are mutual. But when their flirtation is interrupted by a treacherous enemy from the past, Gillaine's secret - and secret desires - could destroy them both..."

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

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

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