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Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

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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 Jasmine

anchored on:our worldcontemporary

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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 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.

                • HH
                  Hex Hall Universe

                  series · 4 books · 2010

                  similar bymagic schoolscontemporaryour worldwitches+2 more

                • Cover of Betwixt & Between
                  Betwixt & Between

                  series · 4 books · 2020

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldurban fantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Washington Witches / Jane Madison
                  Washington Witches / Jane Madison

                  series · 6 books · 2006

                  part of Magical Washington

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasywitches+3 more

                • Cover of Worldweavers
                  Worldweavers

                  series · 4 books · 2007

                  similar bymagic schoolscontemporaryour worldurban fantasy

                • FT
                  Fixed / The Others

                  series · 23 books · 2003

                  similar bycontemporaryparanormal romanceour world+1 more

                • Cover of Dragon's Gift: The Potion Master
                  Dragon's Gift: The Potion Master

                  series · 1 book · 2020

                  part of Dragon's Gift

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasy+2 more

                • JW
                  Jolie Wilkins Universe / Underworld

                  series · 31 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+2 more

                  H. P. Mallory's Jolie Wilkins books, opening with Toil and Trouble, follow a witch in the Pacific Northwest who discovers her hidden supernatural heritage and gets pulled into a hidden community of witches, werewolves, and vampires. Later installments continue her story under the Underworld banner.

                • Cover of Chrestomanci
                  Chrestomanci

                  series · 12 books · 1977

                  completed

                  similar bycontemporary+1 more

                  Chrestomanci, sometimes branded The Worlds of Chrestomanci, is a heptalogy of children's fantasy books written by British author Diana Wynne Jones, published from 1977 to 2006. In the context of the parallel universe setting of the books, Chrestomanci refers to both the British government office that is responsible for supervising the use of magic and Chrestomanci Castle in southern England, which is both residence and headquarters.

                • Cover of Crescent City Fae
                  Crescent City Fae

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar byurban fantasycontemporary+3 more

                • Cover of House of Night
                  House of Night

                  series · 20 books · 2007

                  similar bycontemporary+3 more

                  House of Night is a series of young adult vampire-themed fantasy novels by American author P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast. It follows the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a 16-year-old girl who is "marked", becomes a fledgling vampyre and is required to attend the House of Night boarding school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Books in the series have been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 63 weeks and have sold over seven million copies in North America, and more than ten million books worldwide, in 39 countries.

                • Cover of Supernatural Singles
                  Supernatural Singles

                  series · 3 books · 2022

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryparanormal romance+3 more

                • Cover of Magic for Hire
                  Magic for Hire

                  series · 4 books · 2024

                  similar byurban fantasyour worldcontemporary+1 more

                • Cover of Fate Weaver (Erin Lynn (I) and ReGina Welling)
                  Fate Weaver (Erin Lynn (I) and ReGina Welling)

                  series · 10 books · 2016

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+2 more

                • Cover of Magical Romantic Comedy
                  Magical Romantic Comedy

                  series · 20 books · 2017

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+1 more

                • Cover of That Old Black Magic
                  That Old Black Magic

                  series · 4 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldparanormal romance+1 more

                • Cover of Nice Girl Spin-Offs
                  Nice Girl Spin-Offs

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  part of Half Moon Hollow

                  similar bylightheartedour worldcontemporaryparanormal romance+2 more

                • Cover of Keeper Chronicles (Tanya Huff)
                  Keeper Chronicles (Tanya Huff)

                  series · 5 books · 1998

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyour world+1 more

                • Cover of The Star Stone (Blake)
                  The Star Stone (Blake)

                  series · 1 book · 2011

                  similar byour worldcontemporary+2 more

                • Cover of Pandora's Box
                  Pandora's Box

                  series · 3 books · 2008

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryurban fantasyparanormal romance+1 more

                • Cover of The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy
                  The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy

                  series · 11 books · 2017

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldurban fantasy

                • Cover of Biker Witches / The Accidental Demon Slayer
                  Biker Witches / The Accidental Demon Slayer

                  series · 13 books · 2008

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyour world+1 more

                • Cover of Magic Seasons
                  Magic Seasons

                  series · 4 books · 2009

                  similar byour worldcontemporary+3 more

                • Cover of The Lazy Girl's Guide to Magic
                  The Lazy Girl's Guide to Magic

                  series · 4 books · 2017

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldurban fantasy

                • Cover of Call of Crows
                  Call of Crows

                  series · 3 books · 2015

                  similar bycontemporaryour world+3 more

                  Shelly Laurenston's Call of Crows trilogy — The Unleashing, The Undoing, The Unyielding — is a paranormal romance series that draws on Norse mythology and unfolds partly in Los Angeles. It follows a cast of supernatural protagonists thrown together as Viking-flavored forces resurface in the present day.