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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 Diggers

anchored on:fantasyour worldcontemporarytransported to another worldsurvivalcountryside & village+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 Bromeliad
                  Bromeliad

                  series · 3 books · 1989

                  completed

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldsurvivalour world+4 more

                  The Nome Trilogy, also known as The Bromeliad, is a trilogy of children's books by British writer Terry Pratchett, consisting of the books Truckers (1989), Diggers (1990) and Wings (1990). The trilogy tells the story of the Nomes, a race of tiny people from another world who now live hidden among humans. Through the books they struggle to survive in the human world and, once they learn of their history from an artefact known as "The Thing", make plans to return home.

                • Cover of Watership Down
                  Watership Down

                  series · 21 books · 1972

                  completed

                  similar byfantasyadventuroussurvivalcontemporaryfound familycountryside & villageour world+1 more

                  Watership Down is Richard Adams's 1972 novel following a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their warren and cross the English countryside of Hampshire in search of a new home, developing over the journey a full rabbit culture of language, proverbs, and mythology. Adams returned to the same world in 1996 with Tales from Watership Down, a collection of nineteen short stories mixing rabbit folklore with further adventures of characters from the novel.

                • Cover of Rats of NIMH
                  Rats of NIMH

                  series · 3 books · 1971

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroussurvivalour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH follows a widowed mouse seeking help to save her sick son and her home from a farmer's plow, turning to a colony of rats who escaped laboratory experiments at the National Institute of Mental Health with enhanced intelligence and a literate, technological society of their own. After O'Brien's death, his daughter Jane Leslie Conly continued the story in Racso and the Rats of NIMH, in which a city rat joins the colony ahead of a flood, and R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH, in which the rats rescue and are helped by lost human children. All three carry forward the original's interest in community, responsibility, and the costs of intelligence.

                • Cover of Artemis Fowl
                  Artemis Fowl

                  series · 15 books · 2001

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  Artemis Fowl is a series of eleven fantasy novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer, revolving around various members of the Fowl family. The first cycle, the Artemis Fowl series, consists of eight books, and the second cycle, The Fowl Twins series, is a trilogy. Both releases have received commercial success and positive critical reception in the children's literature genre, and also originated graphic novel adaptations. As of 2013, the novels have sold more than 21 million copies in 44 languages, and are one of the best-selling series of all time. In 2010, Artemis Fowl was voted by readers as their favorite Puffin Books title of all time.

                • Cover of The Homeward Bounders
                  The Homeward Bounders

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1981

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldsurvivalchildren

                  The Homeward Bounders is a fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones in which a vast series of parallel universes serve as the game-boards for a race of demons that delight in war-games and fantasy-games.

                • Cover of James and the Giant Peach
                  James and the Giant Peach

                  Roald Dahl · standalone novel · 1961

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousour worldfound family

                  James and the Giant Peach is a children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, drawn by Michael Simeon, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.

                • Cover of Samuel Johnson
                  Samuel Johnson

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousfunnyour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  John Connolly's Samuel Johnson trilogy follows an ordinary boy and his dachshund, Boswell, who accidentally open a portal to Hell in his English hometown and end up as the unlikely last line of defense against the demons who pour through, beginning with The Gates. The comic horror trilogy continues through Hell's Bells and The Creeps.

                • Cover of Charlie (Roald Dahl)
                  Charlie (Roald Dahl)

                  series · 6 books · 1964

                  completed

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryfunnyour world

                • Cover of The Paradise Trap
                  The Paradise Trap

                  Catherine Jinks · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldsurvivalmiddle grade+1 more

                  Eleven-year-old Marcus is spending a week at the beach with his mother in a tiny old travel trailer, but boredom turns to terror when a new friend discovers a cellar that has magical doors through which people keep disappearing.

                • Cover of Alderley
                  Alderley

                  series · 4 books · 1960

                  similar byfantasycontemporary+5 more

                  Alan Garner's Alderley books begin with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963), children's fantasies set around the real Cheshire hill of Alderley Edge and drawn from its local legends. Garner returned to the same setting and characters decades later in Boneland (2012), a far darker novel for adults in which the now-grown Colin, afflicted with amnesia covering his entire childhood, tries to piece together what really happened to him and his sister. The three books span most of Garner's writing life rather than forming one continuous trilogy.

                • Cover of To Be a Cat
                  To Be a Cat

                  Matt Haig · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroussurvivalour worldmiddle grade

                  Twelve-year-old Barney Willow gets his wish to be a cat but soon discovers that not all felines are cute and cuddly--some are downright evil--and his life is in grave danger, but his missing father may be able to help.

                • Cover of Out of Their Minds
                  Out of Their Minds

                  Clifford D. Simak · standalone novel · 1970

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldour world

                  From the back cover of the first DAW printing: "Out of their minds and the force of their imagination, men have created countless beings, from demons and dragons and monsters of legend to story-book heroes and comic strip characters. What if their world were real - if vampires, devils and Don Quixote hobnobbed with Dagwood Bumstead and Charlie Brown. Such a world would have its fascinations... and its dreadful perils - if it existed. Horton Smith found out that it did exist... and that he was right in the middle of it!"

                • Cover of The Borrowers
                  The Borrowers

                  series · 8 books · 1952

                  similar byfantasysurvivaladventurous+3 more

                  The Borrowers imagines a family of tiny people living secretly beneath the floorboards of an English house, surviving by borrowing pins, stamps, and other small items from the human beans upstairs without ever being seen. Mary Norton's original 1952 novel and its sequels follow the family through discovery, flight, and resettlement across the following decades. Later editions and omnibus volumes gather the novels together, sometimes crediting other writers for introductions or companion material rather than new story content.

                • Cover of No Passengers Beyond This Point
                  No Passengers Beyond This Point

                  Gennifer Choldenko · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldfound familymiddle grade

                  Fantastical adventures of three siblings as they travel to visit their uncle in Colorado.

                • Cover of Goblins!
                  Goblins!

                  Royce Buckingham · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousfunnysurvivalour worldmiddle grade

                  Sneaking out into the woods near the Canadian border, Sam and PJ come across what looks like a mutant gorilla with a bad attitude. But its no ape its a goblin, and thousands more of them live under the earth, kept in check only by a small corps of human Guardians.Sam finds a tunnel below the surface, and in no time hes in the goblins clutches. With goblin leaders Eww-Yuk and Slurp at odds, it will take all of PJs strength and ingenuity to get Sam backbut then again, how hard could it be to outsmart a goblin?Featuring the high adventure and slapstick humor that made Demonkeeper a fantasy favorite, Goblins! is a subterranean romp that will keep readers laughing as they race through the pages to see what happens next.

                • Cover of The Indian in the Cupboard
                  The Indian in the Cupboard

                  series · 5 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousour worldmiddle grade

                  Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series begins with the 1980 children's novel in which a boy discovers that an old cupboard can bring his plastic toy figures to life. The low-fantasy series, which inspired a 1995 film adaptation, continues across Return of the Indian, The Secret of the Indian, The Mystery of the Cupboard, and The Key to the Indian.

                • Cover of The Ocean at the End of the Lane
                  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

                  Neil Gaiman · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryour worldcountryside & village+1 more

                  A seven year old farm boy becomes friends with an eleven year old neighbor girl, who he discovers is ancient and powerful and intervenes when a nonhuman entity attempts to make a home in earthly reality.

                • Cover of Dogsbody
                  Dogsbody

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousour world

                  Sirius the dog star, is reborn on earth as a puppy with a mission to search for the lost Zoi, the murder weapon of the stars.

                • Cover of Wizards of the Game
                  Wizards of the Game

                  David Lubar · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another worldour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  Eighth grader Mercer, whose passion is the fantasy role-playing game Wizards of the Warrior World, hopes to use a fund raiser to bring a gaming convention to his middle school, but instead he attracts four genuine wizards who are trapped on Earth and want his help in returning to their own world.

                • Cover of Un Lun Dun
                  Un Lun Dun

                  China Miéville · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventuroustransported to another world

                  Un Lun Dun is a young adult fantasy novel by China Miéville, released in 2007. The title is derived from 'UnLondon,' the name of the alternate realm where the book is set. It also contains illustrations by Miéville. It was first released in January 2007. The novel also won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

                • Cover of Support Group
                  Support Group

                  series · 2 books · 2009

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryfunnyour worldfound family

                • Cover of The Great Ghost Rescue
                  The Great Ghost Rescue

                  Eva Ibbotson · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryfunnyour world+1 more

                  The Great Ghost Rescue is a children's novel authored by Eva Ibbotson. It was published by Macmillan in 1975 and was Ibbotson's first published novel. The story deals with a ghost called Humphrey the Horrible.

                • Cover of Almuric
                  Almuric

                  series · 1 book · 1964

                  similar byfantasyadventuroustransported to another worldsurvival

                  Published posthumously in 1964, Robert E. Howard's Almuric is a single planetary-romance novel rather than an ongoing series: Earthman Esau Cairn is transported to the savage world of Almuric, where he fights beast-men and wins the love of Altha, in a story indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books.

                • Cover of The Afterlife Academy
                  The Afterlife Academy

                  Frank L. Cole · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryadventurousfunnyour worldmiddle grade

                  HomeMy BooksBrowse ▾Community ▾ Sign up The Afterlife Academy Frank L. Cole 3.91 176 ratings57 reviews Want to Read Kindle $5.99 Rate this book For fans of "Because of Mr. Terupt," "Mr. Terupt Falls Again," and "Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library," this funny, suspenseful adventure is about two very different twelve-year-old boys who must save the world from demons while dealing with parents, school, bullies, and girls. Walter Prairie knows how to deal with bullies. He just has to beat them to the punch. But he doesn't see the biggest hit of his life coming when he is struck dead by a bolt of lightning. Before Walter even knows what's happened, he is sent to a Categorizing office, fast-tracked through the Afterlife Academy, and assigned as a Guardian Agent to protect a High-Level Target. Walter's HLT, Charlie Dewdle, isn't exactly the most popular kid in school. He's what you might call paranormally obsessed. When Charlie finds an ancient book with spells that can be used to open the Gateway for demons to wreak havoc on earth, it's up to him and Walter to fight an eclectic horde of enemies and protect humankind at all costs. But saving the world isn't so easy. Especially when your protector doesn't know the first thing about the Underworld, bullies like Mo Horvath are trying to hunt you down, pretty and popular Melissa Bittner is suddenly talking to you, and your parents think you're going crazy!