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 Flight

anchored on:literary & generalidentitynorth americacontemporaryfirst personscience fiction+4 more

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 Flowers for Algernon
                  Flowers for Algernon

                  Daniel Keyes · standalone novel · 1966

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityscience fictionfirst person

                  A man with a low IQ becomes the subject of an experimental medical procedure which raises his IQ well over genius level.

                • Cover of Double Identity
                  Double Identity

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryidentitycoming of ageyoung adultscience fiction

                  Double Identity is a 2005 young adult novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

                • Cover of Before I Fall
                  Before I Fall

                  series · 2 books · 2010

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of agefirst personyoung adult

                  Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall is a 2010 young-adult novel narrated by teenager Samantha Kingston, who is forced to relive the day of her death repeatedly over the course of a week. Attempting to understand why, Samantha tries different choices and actions each time through, some starkly out of character, as she reckons with her life and relationships. It was adapted into a 2017 film of the same name.

                • Cover of Kindred
                  Kindred

                  Octavia E. Butler · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byemotionalnorth americarace and racismscience fictiontime travelfirst person+1 more

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

                • Cover of Landline
                  Landline

                  Rainbow Rowell · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryidentityscience fictiontime travelfirst person

                  Landline is a 2014 American sci-fi novel by Rainbow Rowell. It tells the story of 37-year-old Georgie McCool who discovers that she is able to call her husband's 22-year-old self through his landline. Rowell stated that aspects from the novel are loosely based on her own life such as the fact that Georgie is incredibly career-driven while her husband is a stay-at-home dad. The character of Georgie McCool was named after the song Georgy Girl and the village of McCool Junction.

                • Cover of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
                  The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

                  Leslye Walton · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageidentityliterary & general

                  Amazon: Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava's quest and her family's saga build to a devastating crescendo. ... A layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

                • Cover of Afterworlds
                  Afterworlds

                  Scott Westerfeld · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalidentityyoung adult+1 more

                  Alternates between a realistic story of a young author writing a "young adult Hindu paranormal romance" novel in New York City and chapters from that novel.

                • Cover of Mirror in the Sky
                  Mirror in the Sky

                  Aditi Khorana · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryidentitycoming of ageyoung adultscience fictionliterary & general

                  For Tara Krishnan, navigating Brierly, the academically rigorous prep school she attends on scholarship, feels overwhelming and impossible. Her junior year begins in the wake of a startling discovery: A message from an alternate Earth, light years away, is intercepted by NASA. This means that on another planet, there is another version of Tara, a Tara who could be living better, burning brighter, because of tiny differences in her choices.

                • Cover of Invisible Ghosts
                  Invisible Ghosts

                  Robyn Schneider · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of ageyoung adultfirst person

                  Rose Asher believes in ghosts. She should, since she has one for a best friend: Logan, her annoying, Netflix-addicted brother, who is forever stuck at fifteen. But Rose is growing up, and when an old friend moves back to Laguna Canyon and appears in her drama class, things get complicated. Jamie Aldridge is charming, confident, and a painful reminder of the life Rose has been missing out on since her brother's death. She watches as Jamie easily rejoins their former friends--a group of magnificently silly theater nerds--while she struggles to choose between the boy who makes her feel alive and the brother she isn't ready to lose.

                • Cover of More Happy Than Not
                  More Happy Than Not

                  Adam Silvera · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byemotionalnorth americaidentityliterary & generalyoung adultscience fictionfirst person

                  When it first gets announced, the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure seems too good to be true to Aaron Soto-miracle cure-alls don't tend to pop up in the Bronx projects. Aaron can't forget how he's grown up poor, how his friends all seem to shrug him off, and how his father committed suicide in their one bedroom apartment. He has the support of his patient girlfriend, if not necessarily his distant brother and overworked mother, but it's not enough. Then Thomas shows up. He doesn't mind Aaron's obsession over the Scorpius Hawthorne books and has a sweet movie set-up on his roof. There are nicknames. Aaron's not only able to be himself, but happiness feels easy with Thomas. The love Aaron discovers may cost him what's left of his life, but since Aaron can't suddenly stop being gay Leteo may be the only way out.

                • Cover of Slam
                  Slam

                  Nick Hornby · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byemotionalcontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of agefirst personyoung adult

                  Slam is a novel written by British author Nick Hornby, published in 2007. The book's main theme is teenage pregnancy and it is written from the perspective of a teenager, Sam.

                • Cover of Revived
                  Revived

                  Cat Patrick · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth americacoming of ageidentityyoung adultscience fictionfirst person

                  A teenaged girl is repeatedly given a drug that revives her immediately after death.

                • Cover of Leaving Fishers
                  Leaving Fishers

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth americaliterary & generalcoming of ageidentityyoung adult

                  Leaving Fishers (1997) is a young adult novel written by Margaret Peterson Haddix centering on a high school girl, Dorry Stevens, and her descent into and escape from a religious cult called The Fishers of Men.

                • Cover of The Martian Child
                  The Martian Child

                  David Gerrold · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalidentityfirst person

                  A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son

                • Cover of Every Day
                  Every Day

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar byemotionalcontemporaryidentitycoming of agefirst personyoung adult

                  David Levithan's Every Day follows A, a consciousness with no fixed body who wakes each morning inside a different person's life, and who falls for a girl named Rhiannon despite the impossibility of ever staying in one body to be with her. The story continues from other perspectives in Another Day and, years later, Someday.

                • Cover of God Help the Child
                  God Help the Child

                  Toni Morrison · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of ageidentityrace and racism

                  God Help the Child is the 11th and final novel by American writer Toni Morrison. News of the book, as well as the title and opening line, were released in December 2014. The novel's original title, preferred by Morrison herself, is The Wrath of Children.

                • Cover of Blood and Chocolate
                  Blood and Chocolate

                  Annette Curtis Klause · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporarycoming of ageyoung adult+1 more

                  Blood and Chocolate is a 1997 paranormal romance novel for young adult readers by Annette Curtis Klause. It is set in the contemporary United States.

                • Cover of Echo
                  Echo

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of ageidentityyoung adult

                  Francesca Lia Block is an American writer of adult and young-adult literature. She is best known for writing the Weetzie Bat series, which she began while a student at UC Berkeley.

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

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth americascience fictiontime travel

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

                • Cover of Faithful
                  Faithful

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of ageidentity

                  Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion--from dark suffering to true happiness--a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls--including an angel who's been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

                • Cover of When You Reach Me
                  When You Reach Me

                  Rebecca Stead · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacoming of agescience fictiontime travel+2 more

                  As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1970s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

                • Cover of The Book of Form and Emptiness
                  The Book of Form and Emptiness

                  Ruth Ozeki · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth americaliterary & generalcoming of agefirst person

                  The Book of Form and Emptiness is a novel by American author Ruth Ozeki, published in 2021 by Viking. Ozeki's fourth novel, the book won the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction. The story follows a boy who hears voices from inanimate objects while the narrative explores themes of mental illness and bereavement.

                • Cover of The Wolves of Mercy Falls
                  The Wolves of Mercy Falls

                  series · 4 books · 2009

                  similar byemotionalcontemporarynorth americayoung adult+2 more

                  The Wolves of Mercy Falls is a series of four novels, located in the genres of romance, fantasy and young adult (YA) fiction, written by Maggie Stiefvater. Published by American multinational company Scholastic from between 2009 and 2014, the series consists of the titles Shiver, Linger, Forever and Sinner. Set in the fictional town of Mercy Falls, Stiefvater has stated that the real town of Ely in Minnesota would be its closest neighbouring destination, with the two towns sharing a similar climate.

                • Cover of Strays
                  Strays

                  Ron Koertge · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byemotionalnorth americacontemporaryliterary & generalcoming of ageyoung adult

                  Recently orphaned, sixteen-year-old Ted O'Connor is sent to a foster home.