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 Grave Expectations

anchored on:british isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyparanormal

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 centered on witches and the practice of witchcraft — covens, hedge magic, familiars, and the witch's place in her community.
  • 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 Ministry of Curiosities
                  Ministry of Curiosities

                  series · 10 books · 2015

                  similar by19th centurybritish isleshistorical fantasy+1 more

                • Cover of The Midnight Witch
                  The Midnight Witch

                  Paula Brackston · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byundeadbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasy+1 more

                  "When the sixth Duke of Radnor dies, his hapless son, Freddie, takes on his title, but it is his daughter, Lilith, who inherits his role as Head Witch of the Lazarus Coven. Raised as a witch, instructed in the art of necromancy, Lilith faces a daunting future, for the coven is threatened by a powerful group of sorcerers, the Sentinels. Nicholas Stricklend, a powerful force in the British government, is the Sentinel charged with wresting the Elixir from Lilith, and he cares not who he must crush in order to succeed. As a society beauty, engaged to another titled witch, and with a grieving mother and an unstable brother to look after, Lilith struggles to maintain her two very different existences. When she meets and falls in love with the talented artist Bram Cardale, she can no longer keep her life as a witch hidden, and she must choose between her loyalty to the coven, her duty to her family, and her love for Bram, or risk destroying everything she holds dear. Paula Brackston's debut novel, The Witch's Daughter, was the little book that could--with a captivating story, remarkable heroine, and eye-catching package, it has sold more than 130,000 copies in all formats. The Midnight Witch is another enchanting tale of love and magic, featuring her signature blend of gorgeous writing, a decadent and intriguing historical backdrop, and a headstrong and relatable heroine for which readers will cheer"--

                • Cover of Newbury & Hobbes Investigations
                  Newbury & Hobbes Investigations

                  series · 23 books · 2008

                  similar by19th centurybritish isles

                  George Mann's steampunk series follows Sir Maurice Newbury, an occult investigator working for the crown in an alternate, more mechanized Victorian Britain, and his assistant Veronica Hobbes, as they take on cases blending supernatural threats with the era's mechanical marvels. The Affinity Bridge, the opening novel, entangles them with a crashed automaton airship and a spreading plague of the reanimated; later books deepen Newbury's struggle with addiction and Veronica's search for her institutionalized sister. It combines detective procedural with alternate-history steampunk London.

                • Cover of Something Strange and Deadly / Eleanor Fitt
                  Something Strange and Deadly / Eleanor Fitt

                  series · 4 books · 2012

                  similar by19th centuryhistorical fantasy+3 more

                • Cover of Department of Unclassified Artefacts
                  Department of Unclassified Artefacts

                  series · 3 books · 2006

                  completed

                  similar bybritish isles19th century+3 more

                • Cover of Otherworld (Kelley Armstrong)
                  Otherworld (Kelley Armstrong)

                  series · 100 books · 1996

                  similar byparanormal+1 more

                  Women of the Otherworld is Kelley Armstrong's long-running urban fantasy series about werewolves, witches, sorcerers, and other supernatural beings trying to pass as ordinary people in the contemporary world, told across thirteen novels plus assorted novellas published between 2001 and 2012. Each book tends to follow a different member of this hidden community while slowly building a shared, continuing world.

                • Cover of The Raven King
                  The Raven King

                  series · 13 books · 1996

                  similar by19th centurybritish isleshistorical fantasy+1 more

                  Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell reintroduces magic to an alternate nineteenth-century England, centering on the prickly rivalry between the two title magicians as they revive a lost English tradition. The linked collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which includes the earlier story "Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower," explores the same magical history from other corners of England and refers back to the legendary Raven King, said to have created English magic centuries before. The two books share a setting and mythology rather than a single sequential plot.

                • Cover of Gemma Doyle
                  Gemma Doyle

                  series · 4 books · 2003

                  similar bybritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy+1 more

                  The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is a trilogy of fantasy novels by American writer Libba Bray. They are told from the perspective of Gemma Doyle, a girl in the late nineteenth century. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy consists of three books: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing.

                • Cover of The Anubis Gates
                  The Anubis Gates

                  series · 3 books · 1983

                  similar bymysteriousbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy

                  The Anubis Gates is a single time-travel fantasy novel by Tim Powers, following a present-day academic who takes part in a time-travel experiment and ends up stranded in early nineteenth-century London. It won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1983 and the Science Fiction Chronicle Award the following year.

                • Cover of The Katerina Trilogy
                  The Katerina Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar byundeadhistorical fantasy19th century+3 more

                • Cover of Ramses the Damned
                  Ramses the Damned

                  series · 3 books · 1989

                  similar byhistorical fantasy+3 more

                • Cover of The Lie Tree
                  The Lie Tree

                  Frances Hardinge · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bymysteriousbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy

                  The Lie Tree is the seventh children's historical fantasy novel by Frances Hardinge, published in 2015 by Macmillan Publishers. The book won the 2015 Costa Book of the Year.

                • TO
                  The Old Kingdom / Abhorsen milieu

                  series · 11 books · 1995

                  similar byfantasy+1 more

                  The Old Kingdom, or Abhorsen in North America and the UK, is a fantasy series written by Australian author Garth Nix. It originated in 1995 with the novel Sabriel and has continued in the novels Lirael (2001), Abhorsen (2003), Goldenhand (2016), and Terciel & Elinor (2021), as well as a prequel novel titled Clariel (2014). The Old Kingdom also consists of the novella The Creature in the Case (2005) and various other short fiction.

                • Cover of The Diviners
                  The Diviners

                  series · 4 books · 2012

                  similar byhistorical fantasyfantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Dream Cycle
                  Dream Cycle

                  series · 26 books · 1919

                  similar by+1 more

                  The Dream Cycle is a series of short stories and novellas by author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). Written between 1918 and 1932, they are about the "Dreamlands", a vast alternate dimension that can only be entered via dreams. The Dreamlands are described as lying deeper than space, matter and time, and are a "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity".

                • Cover of Von Bek
                  Von Bek

                  series · 4 books · 1965

                  similar by+3 more

                  Michael Moorcock's Von Bek novels follow the Von Bek family across different historical periods, part of his wider Eternal Champion multiverse. The sequence opens with The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981) and continues through The Brothel in Rosenstrasse and The City in the Autumn Stars.

                • Cover of Jesperson and Lane
                  Jesperson and Lane

                  series · 5 books · 2011

                  similar bybritish isles19th century+1 more

                • Cover of Elemental Masters
                  Elemental Masters

                  series · 59 books · 1995

                  similar by19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy+1 more

                  Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series reimagines classic fairy tales in various historical settings, with mages who each command one of the four elements — fire, water, earth, or air. The opening novel, The Fire Rose, retells Beauty and the Beast around a fire mage trapped in a werewolf-like curse; later volumes retell other tales and, from Elemental Magic on, bring in numerous co-authors and short-story contributors across more than twenty books.

                • Cover of The Dark Elite
                  The Dark Elite

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar by+3 more

                • Cover of Jackaby
                  Jackaby

                  series · 5 books · 2014

                  similar bymysterious19th centuryfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of The Mesmerist
                  The Mesmerist

                  Ronald L. Smith · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar byundeadbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy

                  Thirteen-year-old Jessamine Grace and her mother make a living as sham spiritualists until they discover that Jess is a mesmerist and that she really can talk to the dead. Soon she is plunged into the dark world of Victorian London s supernatural underbelly and learns that the city is under attack by ghouls, monsters, and spirit summoners. Can Jess fight these powerful forces?

                • Cover of The Turn of the Screw
                  The Turn of the Screw

                  series · 3 books · 1898

                  similar bybritish isles19th century+1 more

                  Henry James's 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw follows a governess at an isolated English country house who becomes convinced that the two children in her care are being stalked by malevolent ghosts, narrated entirely through her own increasingly uncertain account. Its ambiguity over whether the haunting is real has made it one of the most discussed ghost stories in English literature and prompted later works built around it, including Michael Hastings's The Nightcomers, a 1971 prequel imagining events at the house before the governess's arrival. A stage adaptation of James's original text also exists.

                • Cover of The Little White Horse
                  The Little White Horse

                  Elizabeth Goudge · standalone novel · 1946

                  similar bybritish isles19th centuryfantasy+1 more

                  The Little White Horse is a low fantasy children's novel by Elizabeth Goudge, first published by the University of London Press in 1946 with illustrations by C. Walter Hodges, and Anne Yvonne Gilbert in 1992. Coward–McCann published a US edition next year. Set in 1842, it features a recently orphaned teenage girl who is sent to the manor house of her cousin and guardian in the West Country of England. The estate, village, and vicinity are shrouded in mystery and magic; the "little white horse" is a unicorn.

                • Cover of The Lovegrove Legacy / The Witches of London Trilogy
                  The Lovegrove Legacy / The Witches of London Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2014

                  similar bybritish isles19th centuryhistorical fantasyfantasy+1 more