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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 Fox & Hare

anchored on:literary & generalnorth americalate 20th centuryart and artistsbig cityreflective

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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 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 mental unraveling — descent into madness, delusion, and minds at war with themselves.
  • 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 Zeroville
                  Zeroville

                  Steve Erickson · standalone novel · 2007

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                  Zeroville is a 2007 novel by Steve Erickson about the upheaval in the film industry in the 1970s. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and other languages. It was named one of the best novels of the year by Newsweek, the Washington Post BookWorld and the Los Angeles Times Book Review among others, and in winter 2008 was one of the five favorite novels of 800 novelists and critics in a poll of the National Book Critics Circle. The novel was also shortlisted for the Believer Book Award.

                • Cover of Cat's Eye
                  Cat's Eye

                  Margaret Atwood · standalone novel · 1988

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                  Cat's Eye is a 1988 novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood about fictional painter Elaine Risley, who vividly reflects on her childhood and teenage years. Her strongest memories are of Cordelia, who was the leader of a trio of girls who were both very cruel and very kind to her in ways that tint Elaine's perceptions of relationships and her world — not to mention her art — into her middle years. The novel unfolds in mid-20th century Canada, from World War II to the late 1980s, and includes a look at many of the cultural elements of that time period, including feminism and various modern art movements. The book was a finalist for the 1988 Governor General's Award and for the 1989 Booker Prize.

                • Cover of Station Eleven
                  Station Eleven

                  Emily St. John Mandel · standalone novel · 2014

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                  "Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time — from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains — this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet." (source: Goodreads.com)

                • Cover of Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
                  Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

                  Steven Millhauser · standalone novel · 1996

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                  Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer is a 1996 novel by Steven Millhauser. It won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award. It follows the exploits of Martin Dressler, a young, optimistic entrepreneur, in late nineteenth-century New York City. It vividly evokes its time and place through elaborate description.

                • Cover of Interior Chinatown
                  Interior Chinatown

                  Charles Yu · standalone novel · 2020

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                  Interior Chinatown is a 2020 novel by Charles Yu. It is his second novel and was published by Pantheon Books on January 28, 2020. It won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The novel was also longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was shortlisted for the Prix Médicis étranger. A television adaptation of the novel, created by Yu and starring Jimmy O. Yang, premiered on Hulu on November 19, 2024.

                • Cover of Lady Oracle
                  Lady Oracle

                  Margaret Atwood · standalone novel · 1976

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                  Lady Oracle is a novel by Margaret Atwood that parodies Gothic romances and fairy tales. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1976.

                • Cover of Cornish Trilogy
                  Cornish Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 1981

                  completed

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                • Cover of Orlando: A Biography
                  Orlando: A Biography

                  Virginia Woolf · standalone novel · 1928

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                  Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928, inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend. It is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.

                • Cover of Redwork
                  Redwork

                  Michael Bedard · standalone novel · 1990

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                  "The unkempt old house, an eyesore in a gentrified Canadian city neighborhood, reminds 15-year-old Cass of a half-remembered dream. Its cheap second-floor flat is such a godsend that he and his improvident single mother, Alison, don't mind their reclusive, possibly sinister landlord, Mr. Magnus, living on the floor below. While Alison plunges into her long-postponed thesis on William Blake, Cass unpacks and observes neighborhood bullies extort cash from young children and play nasty pranks on Mr. Magnus. When Cass takes a job as an usher in a run-down movie theatre, he endures abuse by the head usher. Meanwhile he ponders the significance of pictures left in his flat--a painting of a snake swallowing its tail, a photograph of young Mr. Magnus in World War I uniform--and of the dreams that haunt him, dreams of muddy trenches, of gunfire, gas, blood, pain, and fear. Curiosity and sympathy draw Cass and his new friend Maddy into the old man's obsession with alchemy, which gives the book its title." — quoted from a review of the book by Margaret A. Chang as published in The Library Journal that is reprinted on this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2017-01-18.

                • Cover of The Cemetery of Untold Stories
                  The Cemetery of Untold Stories

                  Julia Alvarez · standalone novel · 2024

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                  The Cemetery of Untold Stories: A Novel (2024) is a work of magical realism and the seventh novel by Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez. The book follows Alma, a prolific author who, after retiring from her teaching job and writing career, inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic where she decides to create a cemetery for her unfinished manuscripts and notes.

                • Cover of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
                  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

                  Michael Chabon · standalone novel · 2000

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                  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon. A historical fiction novel, it follows the lives of two Jewish cousins, Josef "Joe" Kavalier, a Czech artist and magician who escapes Nazi-occupied Prague, and Sammy Clay, a Brooklyn-born writer. Together, they create The Escapist, a fictional superhero inspired by Joe’s desire to fight fascism and his struggle to rescue his family from Europe. In the story, Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the comics industry during its Golden Age.

                • Cover of The Hogarth Shakespeare
                  The Hogarth Shakespeare

                  series · 1 book · 2016

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                • Cover of Girlfriend in a Coma
                  Girlfriend in a Coma

                  Douglas Coupland · standalone novel · 1998

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                  Girlfriend in a Coma is a novel by Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland. It was first published by HarperCollins Canada in 1998. The novel tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the late 1970s. On the night of a teenage house-wrecking party, one of the protagonists, Karen, falls into a coma. Peculiarly, she seemed to expect it, having given her boyfriend, Richard, a letter detailing the vivid dreams of the future she had experienced and how she wanted to sleep for a thousand years to avoid that dystopia.

                • Cover of The Edible Woman
                  The Edible Woman

                  Margaret Atwood · standalone novel · 1969

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                  The Edible Woman is the first published novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published in 1969. It is the story of a young woman, Marian, whose sane, structured, consumer-oriented world starts to slip out of focus. Following her engagement, Marian feels her body and her self are becoming separated. Marian begins endowing food with human qualities that cause her to identify with it, and finds herself unable to eat, repelled by metaphorical cannibalism. In a foreword written in 1979 for the Virago edition of the novel, Atwood described it as a protofeminist rather than feminist work.

                • Cover of The Medusa Frequency
                  The Medusa Frequency

                  Russell Hoban · standalone novel · 1987

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                  The Medusa Frequency is a 1987 novel by Russell Hoban. Written in a lyrical, often magic realist style, it crosses a number of genres including comedy and fantasy. It uses the story of Orpheus to "meditate on art and reality and love and fear and fidelity and betrayal".

                • Cover of Violet & Claire
                  Violet & Claire

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 1999

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                  This is the story of two girls, racing through space like shadow and light. A photo negative, together they make the perfect image of a girl. Violet is the dark one, dressed in forever black, dreaming Technicolor dreams of spinning the world into her very own silver screen creation. Claire is like a real-life Tinker Bell, radiating love and light, dressing herself in wings of gauze and glitter, writing poems to keep away the darkness. The setting is L.A., a city as beautiful as it is dangerous, and within this landscape of beauty and pain Violet and Claire vow to make their own movie. Together they will show the world the way they want it to be, and maybe then the world will become that place--a place where people no longer hate or fight or want to hurt. But when desire and ambition threaten to rip a seamless friendship apart, only one thing can make two halves whole again--the power of love.Francesca Lia Block's latest novel is a beautifully told story that boldly combines the world of film with the lyrical graceful language of poetry. The voices of two friends--one dark, one light--combine to tell a larger tale of love and loss, and the strength that comes from believing in dreams.

                • Cover of Dorothea Dreams
                  Dorothea Dreams

                  Suzy McKee Charnas · standalone novel · 1986

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                  Dorothea Dreams is a 1986 novel by American author Suzy McKee Charnas.

                • B
                  Bluebeard

                  Kurt Vonnegut & Jr. · standalone novel · 1987

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                  Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) is a 1987 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Told in first-person narrative, it describes the later years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (1973). The novel’s circumstances bear a rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard, popularized by Charles Perrault, a connection that Karabekian mentions once in the novel.

                • Cover of Phases of Gravity
                  Phases of Gravity

                  Dan Simmons · standalone novel · 1989

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                  Follows Richard Baedecker, an Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon, through his midlife crisis. He meanders through India, Glen Oak Illinois, the mountains of Colorado, and the coastline of Oregon, checking up on his son and his former Apollo crewmates.

                • Cover of The Road to Ever After
                  The Road to Ever After

                  Moira Young · standalone novel · 2016

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                  Ordered to leave his hometown, young Davy, an orphaned artist, escorts elderly Miss Flint to her childhood home, where she plans to die.

                • Cover of King of the City
                  King of the City

                  Michael Moorcock · standalone novel · 2000

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                  King of the City (2000) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It is a satire on modern London and its literary scene and, in part, a sequel to Mother London. Narrated by celebrity photographer and erstwhile rock star Dennis Dover, it charts a chaotic ride through London from the sixties to the end of the century.

                • Cover of A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities
                  A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities

                  Ray Bradbury · standalone novel · 1990

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                  A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another tale of two cities is a mystery novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1990. It is the second in a series of three mystery novels that Bradbury wrote featuring a fictionalized version of the author himself as the unnamed narrator.

                • Cover of Eva Luna
                  Eva Luna

                  series · 2 books · 1987

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                • Cover of The House on Mango Street
                  The House on Mango Street

                  Sandra Cisneros · standalone novel · 1984

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                  In a series of inter-connected vignettes, this is the story of a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. Contains magical realism.