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 Ice

anchored on:literary & generalcontemporarynorth america

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 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 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 Things
                  Things

                  series · 3 books · 2002

                  completed

                  similar byliterary & generalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                • Cover of Skylight Confessions
                  Skylight Confessions

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americafamily secrets

                  Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in theConnecticut countryside, to the avenues of Manhattan , and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. Ultimately, it falls to their grandson, Will, to solve the emotional puzzle of his family and of his own identity.

                • Cover of Flowers for Algernon
                  Flowers for Algernon

                  Daniel Keyes · standalone novel · 1966

                  similar byemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

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

                • Cover of Afterworlds
                  Afterworlds

                  Scott Westerfeld · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth america+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 Flight
                  Flight

                  Sherman Alexie · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  Flight is a 2007 novel written by Sherman Alexie. It is written in the first-person, from the viewpoint of a Native American teenager who calls himself Zits. Zits is a foster child, having spent the majority of his life moving from one negative or abusive family experience to another. After running away from his most recent foster home, he is detained by police and put into jail. While in his cell, he meets a new friend, Justice, who introduces Zits to a new way of thinking. A new ideology of making white people pay for their historic treatment of Native Americans. Justice provides the weapons, sending Zits on a mass shooting in a downtown Seattle bank. Shot in the back of the head by security, Zits is suddenly transported to the past and thrust into the body of a stranger; this is the first of many similar incidents. The story confronts Zits' feelings of vulnerability as a misunderstood teenager, an orphan, and as a biracial person with Native American ancestry and how forgiveness across multiple generations is an inside job.

                • Cover of The Martian Child
                  The Martian Child

                  David Gerrold · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth america

                  A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son

                • Cover of Faithful
                  Faithful

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  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 Leaving Fishers
                  Leaving Fishers

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  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 Weetzie Bat
                  Weetzie Bat

                  series · 7 books · 1989

                  similar bynorth americaliterary & generalcontemporarycoming of age+2 more

                  Dangerous Angels, also known as the Weetzie Bat series, is a young adult fiction series by Francesca Lia Block. The series consists of seven novels: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, Baby Be-Bop, Necklace of Kisses and Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat. The books follow main character, Weetzie Bat and her friends and family members, who all live in Los Angeles.

                • Cover of Pictures in the Dark
                  Pictures in the Dark

                  Gillian Cross · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byliterary & generalidentitycontemporarycoming of agefamily secrets+1 more

                  A chance photograph taken for the school Camera Club draws Charlie into the emotionally troubled lives of his classmate Jennifer's family, especially that of her younger brother who harbors an astounding secret.

                • Cover of Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All
                  Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

                  Laura Ruby · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitynorth americacoming of age+1 more

                  Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All is a young adult novel by Laura Ruby, published October 1, 2019, by Balzer + Bray.

                • Cover of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
                  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

                  Karen Joy Fowler · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitynorth americafamily secrets+1 more

                  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a 2013 novel by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler. The novel won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was also shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

                • Cover of Sacrament
                  Sacrament

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byliterary & generalidentitycontemporary+2 more

                  Sacrament is a 1996 novel by British author Clive Barker. It follows a wildlife photographer who is obsessed with documenting species of animals that are faced with extinction. It is set in Yorkshire, England, San Francisco and Hudson Bay, Canada and explores how his obsession is connected to his upbringing in Yorkshire. The Author described it as "a story about how we become who we are and how we must deal with what we are by facing up to including the things that happened to us in childhood, good and bad. It's also about what's happening to our planet."

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

                  Leslye Walton · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byemotionalidentityliterary & generalcontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  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 The Queen's Gambit
                  The Queen's Gambit

                  Walter Tevis · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitynorth americacoming of age

                  The Queen's Gambit is a 1983 American novel by Walter Tevis, exploring the life of fictional female chess prodigy Beth Harmon. A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, it covers themes of adoption, feminism, chess, drug addiction and alcoholism. The book was adapted for the 2020 Netflix miniseries, The Queen's Gambit.

                • Cover of To Paradise
                  To Paradise

                  Hanya Yanagihara · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitynorth america+1 more

                  To Paradise is a 2022 novel by American novelist Hanya Yanagihara. The book, Yanagihara's third, takes place in an alternate version of New York City, and has three sections, respectively set in 1893, 1993, and 2093. Though a bestseller, the novel received mixed reviews from critics.

                • Cover of Ojibwe
                  Ojibwe

                  series · 2 books · 1998

                  similar byliterary & generalcontemporarynorth america+2 more

                • Cover of Because of Anya
                  Because of Anya

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  Because of Anya is a children's novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix first published on November 1, 2002. The novel is about a ten-year-old girl with alopecia areata, her difficulties in school, and the importance of friendship.

                • Cover of Echo
                  Echo

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  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 God Help the Child
                  God Help the Child

                  Toni Morrison · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth americacoming of age

                  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 Shadow of Ashland
                  Shadow of Ashland

                  series · 3 books · 1996

                  completed

                  similar byliterary & generalnorth america+4 more

                • Cover of Awake and Dreaming
                  Awake and Dreaming

                  Kit Pearson · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalcontemporarynorth america+1 more

                  Awake and Dreaming is a children's novel by Canadian author Kit Pearson and illustrator Margot Zemach. It was first published in 1996. The book follows an impoverished, introverted nine-year-old girl named Theo Caffrey, who dreams of living with a "real" family. The novel won the 1997 Ruth Schwartz Children's Book Award.

                • Cover of Dorothea Dreams
                  Dorothea Dreams

                  Suzy McKee Charnas · standalone novel · 1986

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarynorth america

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

                • Cover of Heaven Eyes
                  Heaven Eyes

                  David Almond · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar byliterary & generalemotionalidentitycontemporarycoming of age

                  Heaven Eyes is a young adult novel by author David Almond. It was published in Great Britain by Hodder Children's Books in 2000 and by Delacorte Press in the United States in 2001. A paperback version was released in 2002 by Dell Laurel Leaf.