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 Diggers

anchored on:contemporary

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 Watership Down
                  Watership Down

                  series · 21 books · 1972

                  completed

                  similar byfound familycontemporaryour 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 The Leftovers
                  The Leftovers

                  Tom Perrotta · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarysmall townnorth america+1 more

                  The Leftovers is a 2011 satirical supernatural novel by American author Tom Perrotta. Set in the aftermath of a Rapture-like event in which 2% of Earth's human population vanished into thin air, it chronicles the lives of several individuals from a small New York town attempting to adjust to the significant cultural shift brought about by the event, while also navigating their personal trauma and losses.

                • Cover of Adam Binder
                  Adam Binder

                  series · 4 books · 2020

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldnorth america+3 more

                  The Adam Binder novels are a series of urban fantasy novels by David R. Slayton. The series consists of four novels, White Trash Warlock (2020), Trailer Park Trickster (2021), Deadbeat Druid (2022), and Redneck Revenant (2025). The novels received critical praise for their depiction of poverty, LGBT issues, and family relationships in the setting of urban fantasy novels. A spin-off novel set between books three and four, Rogue Community College, was published in October, 2024.

                • Cover of One Last Stop
                  One Last Stop

                  Casey McQuiston · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar byemotionalcontemporaryromancecontemporary romanceour worldnorth america+1 more

                  One Last Stop is a 2021 LGBTQ romance novel written by American author Casey McQuiston. The novel is about a woman named August Landry, a cynical pseudo detective, who finds love in a woman named Jane Su she meets on a subway, a punk butch lesbian from the 1970s who has been misplaced in time and is trapped on the subway.

                • Cover of The Cousins O'Dwyer
                  The Cousins O'Dwyer

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar byfound familyemotionalcontemporaryromance

                  Nora Roberts's contemporary-fantasy trilogy follows three cousins in County Mayo, Ireland - the American-raised Iona Sheehan and her Irish cousins Branna and Connor O'Dwyer - who discover they carry the power of a sixteenth-century sorceress, Sorcha. Together they take up her unfinished fight against Cabhan, the dark wizard responsible for her death, across Dark Witch, Shadow Spell, and Blood Magick. Each book centers a different cousin's romance alongside the shared family battle against Cabhan.

                • Cover of Sign of Seven Trilogy
                  Sign of Seven Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar bycontemporarysmall townromance+3 more

                  Nora Roberts' Sign of Seven trilogy centers on Hawkins Hollow, a small town cursed after three boys — Caleb, Fox and Gage — accidentally released a destructive force by spilling their blood at an ancient stone called the Pagan Stone. Every seven years the town descends into a week of violent, unexplained madness. Blood Brothers opens the series as reporter Quinn Black arrives to investigate the phenomenon and is drawn into Cal's fight against the coming evil, with The Pagan Stone and The Hollow continuing the trio's battle.

                • Cover of Green Creek
                  Green Creek

                  series · 4 books · 2018

                  similar bycontemporary+5 more

                • Cover of The Dark Artifices
                  The Dark Artifices

                  series · 4 books · 2016

                  part of The Mortal Instruments

                  similar byfound familyemotionalcontemporarynorth america

                  The Dark Artifices is a trilogy written by Cassandra Clare. The series is chronologically the fourth series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles and a sequel to The Mortal Instruments. It is set in Los Angeles. The series consists of three books: Lady Midnight, Lord of Shadows and Queen of Air and Darkness, in that particular order. Centered around the protagonist, Emma Carstairs, the series follows her journey as a Shadowhunter at the Los Angeles Institute, and her life with her best-friend and parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, and his family. The series is about a sacred bond of "parabatai", two bonded Shadowhunters, and it is more valuable than any bond in this world. This bond makes the two more powerful and strong, but there is only one drawback - it is forbidden to fall in love with your parabatai. It so happens that Emma and Julian, two parabatai, have fallen in love. The Dark Artifices is a trilogy about their struggle against their enemies and how the two protagonists deal with their forbidden love and the resulting consequences. The series is told from the point-of-view of the various different characters in the story.

                • Cover of Guardians Trilogy (Nora Roberts)
                  Guardians Trilogy (Nora Roberts)

                  series · 3 books · 2015

                  similar byemotionalcontemporaryromance+2 more

                • Cover of Unicorn Mountain
                  Unicorn Mountain

                  Michael Bishop · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth america+1 more

                  From the flaps of the Arbor House first edition: "Unicorn Mountain is the story of four people whose lives are transformed by a band of unicorns. Each one of them is enmeshed in the grinding anxieties of daily life. Libby Quarrels is a divorced rancher in the Colorado mountains, just getting by, and unsure about how to react to the fact that she sometimes sees unicorns up in the high valley; Bo Gavin is an Atlanta adman who is gay and has AIDS, who has no one to turn to until Libby takes him in; Sam Coldpony, a Ute Indian and Libby's ranch hand, is estranged from his wife and daughter and has an uncomfortable feeling that he deserves supernatural punishment; Paisley Coldpony, Sam's daughter, is literally haunted by her mother, a recent suicide, and feels the call to become the true shaman of her tribe - a big burden for a teenager in a small-town high school. And then there are the unicorns. Sam and Libby have seen them, but sometimes they just aren't there. And while Libby is off fetching Bo in Atlanta, Sam sees one die - and vanish. But Bo begins to receive television channels from another world, and sees a show, hosted by Marlin Perkins, on a deadly equine disease among the unicorns. And it becomes evident that someone has to do something here, in this world, to save the unicorns, before everything becomes so direly messed up that the situation is totally out of control: because Bo is dying, a vengeful ghost is after Sam, Paisley is looking for the father who abandoned her, and Libby, holding everything together by hard work and will power, is definitely losing her grip. But this is a book in which magic works, in such a way as to change everything for the better. And in the end Unicorn Mountain is about salvation even when the odds are against you."

                • Cover of The Inn Boonsboro Trilogy
                  The Inn Boonsboro Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporarysmall townromancecontemporary romancenorth america+1 more

                • PP
                  Pack / Pride Universe

                  series · 20 books · 2006

                  similar bycontemporary+3 more

                  Shelly Laurenston's Pride novels, beginning with The Mane Event, are paranormal romances set among shapeshifter clans — lions, hyenas, wolves, and more — who mix pack politics with broad comedy and romantic pairings across a sprawling ensemble cast. The connected Pack books extend the same shared world with a different cluster of characters.

                • Cover of Bod Owens
                  Bod Owens

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar byfound familycontemporaryour world+1 more

                  The Graveyard Book follows Nobody "Bod" Owens, a toddler who escapes the murder of his family and is raised among the ghosts of an old English graveyard, absorbing their otherworldly customs while a threat from his past waits beyond the gates. Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and illustrator P. Craig Russell later adapted it into a two-volume graphic novel. Bod's story spans the original novel and that graphic-novel retelling rather than continuing in a prose sequel.

                • Cover of The Martian Child
                  The Martian Child

                  David Gerrold · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byfound familyemotionalcontemporarynorth america

                  A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son

                • Cover of The Devouring Gray
                  The Devouring Gray

                  series · 3 books · 2019

                  similar bycontemporarysmall townour world+1 more

                • Cover of Lost in the Never Woods
                  Lost in the Never Woods

                  Aiden Thomas · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bycontemporary+2 more

                • Cover of Starling House
                  Starling House

                  Alix E. Harrow · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar bycontemporarysmall townour worldnorth america+2 more

                  Starling House is a 2023 gothic fantasy novel by American author Alix E. Harrow published by Tor Books. The novel tells a story of a young woman, Opal, who lives in a destitute region of Kentucky, attempting to find an economic means to uplift her brother from poverty and pay for his education. When she accepts the position as maid at the enigmatic Starling House, a mansion shrouded in mystery, she becomes entangled in a web of strange, supernatural and historical secrets that are linked to the town's dark past. At the same time, she resists the exploitation of the land and its people by powerful, profit-driven forces like the pointedly named Gravely Power, striving to secure her brother's future, safeguard Starling House, and assert control over her own destiny.

                • SH
                  Sea Haven

                  series · 23 books · 2003

                  similar bycontemporarynorth america+3 more

                • Cover of House of Night
                  House of Night

                  series · 20 books · 2007

                  similar bycontemporarynorth america+2 more

                  House of Night is a series of young adult vampire-themed fantasy novels by American author P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast. It follows the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a 16-year-old girl who is "marked", becomes a fledgling vampyre and is required to attend the House of Night boarding school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Books in the series have been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 63 weeks and have sold over seven million copies in North America, and more than ten million books worldwide, in 39 countries.

                • Cover of Black Dagger Brotherhood
                  Black Dagger Brotherhood

                  series · 40 books · 2005

                  part of Black Dagger

                  similar byemotionalcontemporary+2 more

                  The Black Dagger Brotherhood is an ongoing series of paranormal romance books by author J. R. Ward. The series focuses on a society of vampire warriors who live together and defend their race against de-souled humans called lessers. The first book in the series was published in 2005.

                • Cover of The Overstory
                  The Overstory

                  Richard Powers · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar byfound familyemotionalcontemporarynorth america

                  The Overstory is a novel by American author Richard Powers, published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. The book follows nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. It features an innovative and non-linear narrative structure and explores themes of environmental activism and humanity's relationship with the natural world.

                • Cover of Alpha and Omega
                  Alpha and Omega

                  series · 15 books · 2007

                  part of Mercy Thompson

                  similar bycontemporarynorth america

                  Alpha and Omega follows Anna Latham, a rare and instinctively calming "Omega" werewolf rescued from an abusive pack, and Charles Cornick, the enforcer who polices North America's werewolves on his father's behalf, as their partnership becomes both a working relationship and a slow-building romance. Patricia Briggs runs the series alongside her Mercy Thompson books in the same shared world — the opening novella overlaps the events of Mercy's first book, Moon Called — before Cry Wolf and its sequels branch into their own cases.

                • Cover of Phoenix Pack
                  Phoenix Pack

                  series · 8 books · 2013

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of Bowen Boys
                  Bowen Boys

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar bycontemporary+4 more