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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 Fiendish

anchored on:fantasycursesour worldcontemporaryyoung adultdark fantasy+4 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 Fiend
                  Fiend

                  Alma Katsu · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasycursesfamily secretsour world

                  Imagine if the Sackler family had a demon at their beck and call. The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed. At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.

                • Cover of The Replacement
                  The Replacement

                  Brenna Yovanoff · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasyour worldyoung adultsmall town

                  Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement—left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, he's slowly dying in the human world. Mackie would give anything to live a normal life, play his bass, and find out more about an oddly intriguing girl named Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world—or theirs.

                • Cover of What Big Teeth
                  What Big Teeth

                  Rose Szabo · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyfantasyfamily secretsour worldyoung adult

                  What Big Teeth is a 2021 young adult gothic dark fantasy novel by Rose Szabo and marks their debut novel.

                • Cover of The Radleys
                  The Radleys

                  Matt Haig · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasyfamily secretsour worldyoung adult

                  The Radleys is a paranormal fantasy novel for young adults by Matt Haig, published 1 July 2010 by Canongate Books.

                • Cover of The Black Tattoo
                  The Black Tattoo

                  Sam Enthoven · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasyour worldyoung adult

                  The Black Tattoo is a 2006 young adult fantasy novel by Sam Enthoven. It deals with a boy, Charlie, becoming possessed by a demon that manifests itself in the form of a black tattoo on his body.

                • Cover of The Frenzy
                  The Frenzy

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasycursesour worldyoung adultsmall town+1 more

                  Love is a werewolf, influenced by the moon and terror, and always about to change. Liv has a secret. Something happened to her when she was thirteen. Something that changed everything. Liv knows she doesn’t belong anymore—not in her own skin, not in her family . . . not anywhere. The only time she truly feels like herself is when she’s with her boyfriend, Corey, and in the woods that surround her town. But in the woods, a mysterious woman watches Liv. In the woods, a pack of wild boys lurks. In the woods, Liv learns about the curse that will haunt her forever. The curse that caused the frenzy four years ago. And that may cause it again, all too soon. While Corey and Liv’s love binds them together, Liv’s dark secret threatens to tear them apart as she struggles to understand who—or what—she really is. And by the light of the full moon, the most dangerous secrets bare their claws. . . .

                • Cover of Weaveworld
                  Weaveworld

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1987

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyfantasyour world

                  Weaveworld is a 1987 dark fantasy novel by English writer Clive Barker. It is about a magical world, known as the Fugue, which has been hidden inside a carpet to safeguard it from both inquisitive humans and hostile supernatural foes. Two humans become embroiled in the fate of the Fugue, attempting to save it from those who seek to destroy it. The book was nominated in 1988 for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

                • Cover of The Witches
                  The Witches

                  Roald Dahl · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasy+1 more

                  The Witches is a 1983 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. A dark fantasy, the story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. The witches are ruled by the vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who arrives in England to organise her plan to turn all of the children there into mice.

                • Cover of Galilee
                  Galilee

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasyfamily secrets

                  Galilee is a novel by British writer Clive Barker, published in 1998 by HarperCollins Publishers. It chronicles the rise and fall of two very different, but equally powerful dynasties. The first dynasty, the Gearys, are a glamorous and rich family, similar to the Kennedys, who have been a power in America since the Reconstruction. The Barbarossas are a family of godlike beings. The two parents, Cesaria and Nicodemus, came into existence during the Bronze Age, somewhere between Canaan and the city of Samarkand. They have since had four children, the eldest of which is the titular Galilee.

                • Cover of The Damnation Game
                  The Damnation Game

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1985

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyfantasyour world

                  Marty Strauss is a compulsive gambler fresh out of prison when he's hired as bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a reclusive tycoon whose fortune and continued existence trace back to a bargain struck decades earlier, during World War II, with a man named Mamoulian. That bargain is coming due: Mamoulian, who commands powers reaching well past death, wants what he's owed, and Whitehead's household -- his wife, his daughter Carys, his previous bodyguard -- is caught in the middle of a decades-old debt finally being called in. Marty, out of his depth from the start, finds himself the only one willing to stand against Mamoulian. Clive Barker's first novel.

                • Cover of The Unmaking of June Farrow
                  The Unmaking of June Farrow

                  Adrienne Young · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar bycontemporaryfantasycursesforbidden lovefamily secretsour worldsmall town

                  In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors. It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own. After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’sdecades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

                • Cover of Pet Sematary
                  Pet Sematary

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar bydarkcontemporarycursessmall town+1 more

                  Pet Sematary is a 1983 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of a family moving to Maine and settling closer to a pet cemetery in the woods, which is home to a terrifying force that brings death and sorrow. The novel was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984, and adapted into two films: one in 1989 and another in 2019 as well as several spinoffs.

                • Cover of Hoodoo
                  Hoodoo

                  Ronald L. Smith · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasyfamily secretssmall town+1 more

                  With this vivid debut, Zora Neale Hurston meets Stephen King in a supernatural Southern Gothic tale for middle grade readers.

                • Cover of Horns
                  Horns

                  Joe Hill · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyour worldsmall town

                  WorldCat: After his childhood sweetheart is brutally killed and suspicion falls on him, Ig Parrish goes on a drinking binge and wakes up with horns on his head, hate in his heart, and an incredible new power which he uses in the name of vengeance.

                • Cover of The Mayfair Witches Saga
                  The Mayfair Witches Saga

                  series · 3 books · 1990

                  completed

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasyfamily secretsdark fantasy

                  Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a trilogy of Gothic supernatural horror fantasy novels by American author Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

                • Cover of The Library at Mount Char
                  The Library at Mount Char

                  Scott Hawkins · standalone novel · 2015

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                  The Library at Mount Char is a contemporary fantasy/horror novel written by Scott Hawkins. It is his first novel.

                • Cover of Witch House
                  Witch House

                  Evangeline Walton · standalone novel · 1945

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                  Witch House is a fantasy novel by American writer Evangeline Walton. It was published in 1945 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,000 copies. It was the first full-length novel to be published by Arkham House and was listed as the initial book in the Library of Arkham House Novels of Fantasy and Terror. An expanded version, with a newly written 20,000-word prologue, was published in England in 1950. In 2013, Centipede Press issued the first American edition of this revised version, also including previously unpublished writings by Walton and several of her short stories.

                • Cover of Mrs. God
                  Mrs. God

                  Peter Straub · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasyour world

                  Mrs. God is a fantasy novel by American writer Peter Straub. It was first published in 1990 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 1,350 copies, of which 600 copies were signed by the author and the artist, bound in quarter leather and slipcased as a deluxe edition. The novel is expanded from the short novel of the same name that appeared in Straub's collection Houses Without Doors. A trade edition hardcover was issued later.

                • Cover of Blood Opera
                  Blood Opera

                  series · 3 books · 1992

                  completed

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyfantasyfamily secrets+1 more

                  The Blood Opera Sequence is a thriller/horror novel series by English writer Tanith Lee. The series consists of three novels: Dark Dance, Personal Darkness, and Darkness, I.

                • Cover of Book of the Art
                  Book of the Art

                  series · 3 books · 1989

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasydark fantasy+1 more

                  The Art was meant to be a trilogy about a hidden order guarding the boundary between our world and Quiddity, a dream-sea shared by all sleeping minds, but Clive Barker only completed two of its three volumes. The Great and Secret Show follows a decades-long feud between two men who discover Quiddity's power - one seeking to harness it, the other to protect it - with consequences that distort reality itself; Everville continues the story a generation later. The planned third volume was never published.

                • Cover of Messenger of Fear
                  Messenger of Fear

                  series · 3 books · 2014

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasyour worldyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of The Lost
                  The Lost

                  Jonathan Aycliffe · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar bydarkcontemporarydark fantasyforbidden lovefamily secrets+1 more

                  From the dust jacket flaps of the US HarperPrism first edition: "It all started when the gypsy fortune-teller looked him in the eye - and ran away screaming. Michael was a teacher at a prep school in Cambridge. Barely thirty, he felt immensely old. He was tired of his life, tired of his job, tired of dreary England. An though he didn't know it yet - tired of Sophie and her safe undemanding love. So Michael took a sabbatical and went to Romania, hoping to claim the property his grandparents had abandoned after World War II. He found he was a titled lord, and more - the owner of an ancient stronghold in the Transylvanian Alps, Castel Vlaicu. Thus, Michael Feraru became Count Mihai Vlahuta. It was all a lark; or at most, an adventure. Until the gypsy recognized him - or something about him - in the streets of Bucharest. Until he picked up the doll. And of course, the girl - the unexpected, unexplainable, irresistible dark-eyed girl. At Castel Vlaicu, Michael was to learn of an evil older than time, an evil that reached back to the very origins of his shattered family - and into his own dark future. He was to learn the secret of the strigoï. The undead. Not vampires. Something far, far worse. And far more seductive... The Lost is a novel of dark discoveries, of a man who loses his soul, and more, in the search for his secret destiny. It is a story of passion and horror, and of the doomed love that links the two."

                • Cover of Full Tilt
                  Full Tilt

                  Neal Shusterman · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryfantasyour worldyoung adult

                  When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra.

                • Cover of Jerusalem's Lot
                  Jerusalem's Lot

                  series · 3 books · 1975

                  similar bydarkcontemporaryour worldsmall town

                  Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.