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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 Divided

anchored on:paranormalnorth americacontemporaryyoung adultpsychic powerssurvival+1 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 The Morganville Vampires
                  The Morganville Vampires

                  series · 40 books · 2006

                  completed

                  similar bytensecontemporaryparanormalnorth americayoung adult+2 more

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

                • Cover of Sunshine
                  Sunshine

                  Robin McKinley · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byparanormaltensecontemporarysurvivalnorth america

                  From the front flap of the Berkley HB first edition: "There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires. They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion - within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight. She knows that he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, as dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day..."

                • Cover of The Shining
                  The Shining

                  series · 5 books · 1977

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powers+1 more

                  Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining follows the Torrance family as winter caretakers of the isolated, malevolent Overlook Hotel, where father Jack is gradually consumed by the hotel's influence while his young son Danny's psychic "shining" draws its attention. Doctor Sleep (2013) picks up the story decades later, following Danny as an adult still marked by that childhood ordeal. Together the two form a horror duology spanning nearly forty years of real-world publication.

                • Cover of The Body Finder
                  The Body Finder

                  series · 5 books · 2010

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarynorth americapsychic powersyoung adult

                • Cover of Touch (Laurie Faria Stolarz)
                  Touch (Laurie Faria Stolarz)

                  series · 5 books · 2008

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powersnorth americayoung adult

                • Cover of Firestarter
                  Firestarter

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powers+1 more

                  WorldCat: Innocence and beauty ignite with evil and terror... First, a man and a woman are subjects of a top-secret government experiment designed to produce extraordinary psychic powers. Then, they are married and have a child. A daughter. Early on the daughter shows signs of a wild and horrifying force growing within her. Desperately, her parents try to train her to keep that force in check, to 'act normal'. Now the government wants its brainchild back for its own insane ends.

                • Cover of After Obsession
                  After Obsession

                  Steven E. Wedel & Carrie Jones · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byparanormaltensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powersyoung adult

                  When Alan, a half-Navajo in touch with the spiritual mysticism of his ancestors, meets Aimee, a gifted psychic in his new high school, they realize they've had precognitive dreams of each other and that they must confront an evil spirit that has been responsible for mysterious deaths in the river in their small Maine town for hundreds of years and which is now haunting Alan's cousin Courtney.

                • Cover of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
                  The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

                  series · 2 books · 2009

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarysurvivalnorth americayoung adult

                • Cover of Carrie
                  Carrie

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bytensecontemporarynorth americapsychic powers

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

                • Cover of Companions of the Night
                  Companions of the Night

                  Vivian Vande Velde · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byparanormaltensecontemporarynorth americayoung adult+1 more

                  When sixteen-year-old Kerry Nowicki helps a young man escape from a group of men who claim he is a vampire, she finds herself faced with some bizarre and dangerous choices. When Kerry's little brother forgets his stuffed bear at the laundry, Kerry ventures out at 11th p.m. to retrieve it for him. The laundry is deserted and kind of spooky, and while she's there three men burst in, dragging a bound and bloodied young man they insist is a vampire. Kerry helps him escape, only to be caught up in a desperate game between vampire hunters and their prey.

                • Cover of Visions (Lisa McMann)
                  Visions (Lisa McMann)

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporaryparanormalpsychic powersyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of Witch
                  Witch

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powersnorth americayoung adult

                  From Publishers Weekly In this hokey, meandering novel, Julia is a girl gifted with a healing touch and the power to glimpse the future. When she sees a vision of her best friend's boyfriend, Jim, shot and bleeding to death, she does her best to keep him out of danger. But then another friend is shot while witnessing a gas station holdup, and Julia and Jim set out to wreak revenge on the gunman. Meanwhile, Julia's best friend discovers that the gunman just happens to be the deranged former boyfriend of Kary, the recently deceased half-sister Julia never knew. Julia's mother--also a healer--had died in an attempt to save Kary's life. In another part of town, a carload of good witches is hot on Julia's trail, determined to keep her from abusing her powers. Typically, Pike's writing is peppy enough to animate his most tangled plots; here, however, his style becomes choppy and unconvincing--unable to sustain the coincidence-riddled story. In addition, the text is littered with sexist one-liners which, along with a humorless running "joke," are as irritating as they are offensive. Ages 13-up. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

                • Cover of The Third Eye
                  The Third Eye

                  Lois Duncan · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bytenseparanormalnorth americacontemporarypsychic powersyoung adult

                  The Third Eye is a 1984 novel for young adults by Lois Duncan. It is a supernatural/suspense novel which tells the story of a girl with a psychic gift.

                • Cover of Later
                  Later

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powers+2 more

                  A young boy, with the power of seeing and talking with the recently deceased, and his single mother try to avoid personal and financial disasters.

                • Cover of The Institute
                  The Institute

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powerssurvival

                  The Institute is a 2019 American science fiction-horror novel by Stephen King, published by Scribner. The book follows twelve-year-old genius Luke Ellis. When his parents are murdered, he is kidnapped by intruders and awakens in the Institute, a facility that houses other abducted children who have telepathy or telekinesis. The Institute was published on September 10, 2019, and met with generally positive reviews.

                • Cover of Misery
                  Misery

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1987

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarysurvival

                  Novelist Paul Sheldon finishes the manuscript that will finally kill off Misery Chastain, the heroine who made his career, when a snowstorm sends his car off a Colorado road. He wakes with both legs shattered, in the care of Annie Wilkes, a former nurse and 'number one fan' with no intention of taking him to a hospital. Annie manages his pain with drugs he comes to depend on, and her moods swing between doting and violent. When she learns Misery doesn't survive his new manuscript, her reaction makes clear Paul isn't just her patient, he's her hostage. A Stephen King novel about a writer at his most devoted fan's mercy.

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

                  Barrie Summy · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byparanormaltensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powers

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

                • Cover of Sleep No More
                  Sleep No More

                  Aprilynne Pike · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powersnorth americayoung adult

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

                • Cover of Voracious
                  Voracious

                  Alice Henderson · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powerssurvivalnorth america

                  Madeline Keye can touch someone and see flashes of the past. This gift has set her apart, and she finds sanctuary in the wilderness. That is, until a back-country hike in Glacier National Park turns into a hunt--with her as the prey.

                • Cover of Made for You
                  Made for You

                  Melissa Marr · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bytensenorth americacontemporarypsychic powerssurvivalyoung adult

                  Southern small town darling Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital with the frightening ability to see through the eyes of the victims of a serial killer, and realizes that she, too, is a target of the depraved stalker.

                • Cover of If There Be Dragons
                  If There Be Dragons

                  Kay Hooper · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bytenseparanormalnorth americacontemporarypsychic powerssurvival

                  New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper weaves seduction, suspense, and the paranormal into a spellbinding romance centered on an enigmatic woman--and the man whose touch threatened to expose her most intimate vulnerabilities.What was a woman like Brooke Kennedy doing running a guest lodge alone in the Montana wilderness? And why was her best friend so worried about her? Those were the questions Cody Nash asked himself after agreeing to cancel his tropical vacation to go on a mission of mercy into blizzard country. For the strong and self-assured woman he found didn't need or want his help--but she was in trouble. Brooke had isolated herself from the world for reasons she wouldn't or couldn't say. But Cody didn't need to be a psychic to sense that Brooke was afraid. Even more, her fear had intensified from the moment he arrived. Now, as a dangerous storm strands them together, Cody must learn the well-guarded secret of this beautiful, gifted woman--if he can convince her to give him the one thing he needs to save her from a self-imposed exile: her trust.From the Paperback edition.

                • Cover of Clare Fern
                  Clare Fern

                  series · 2 books · 2011

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powersyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of The Night Walkers
                  The Night Walkers

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar bytenseparanormalcontemporarypsychic powersyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Blood Red
                  Blood Red

                  Heather Graham · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byparanormaltensenorth americacontemporary

                  When a fortune-teller shows bridesmaid Lauren Crow an omen of her gruesome death, she and her friends laugh it off as cheesy theatrics--until women begin disappearing in the night.Even as the streets become more dangerous, Lauren finds herself lusting after a man who is himself dangerous--and quite possibly crazy. Mark Davidson prowls the city by night armed with crosses and holy water, in search of vampires, whose existence, he insists, is real. He is as irresistibly drawn to Lauren as she is to him, and not only because she's the image of his murdered fiancee. But Mark's frightening obsession with finding his lover's killer merely hides a bitter vendetta that cuts deeper than grief over a lost love. As Lauren wrestles with desire and disbelief, sinister shadows lengthen over New Orleans, threatening her friends and foretelling a battle that may spell the end of the city's uneasy truce between the living and the undead.