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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 Lawless

anchored on:historical romancenorth america19th centurywesternsforbidden loveadventurous+1 more

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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 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 Lady Athlyne
                  Lady Athlyne

                  Bram Stoker · standalone novel · 1908

                  similar byforbidden love19th centuryhistorical romanceemotionalnorth america+1 more

                  "Joy Ogilvie, the beautiful young daughter of a Kentucky colonel, plays a joke with her friends, pretending to be "Lady Athlyne", after hearing a story about the dashing Irish nobleman Lord Athlyne. Little does she know that half a world away, the real Lord Athlyne is a prisoner of war in a South African camp, where word reaches him that a woman in America is impersonating his wife. Upon his release, he decides to investigate the situation and travels to New York, where a near-fatal accident introduces him to Joy and her father. Athlyne and Joy fall instantly in love-but a series of misadventures and dangerous obstacles threatens to prevent their marriage. And when Colonel Ogilvie learns of their affair and challenges Athlyne to a duel to the death, their love just may end in tragedy!" --quoting the Amazon product page for the 2007 Valancourt Books edition as of 2017-08-29

                • Cover of Legend
                  Legend

                  Jude Deveraux · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth america19th centuryadventurousemotional

                  Her wedding fast approaching, celebrated chef Kady Long knew she was the luckiest woman alive...until she slipped into a delicate satin wedding dress she found in an antique flour tin and was overcome by an odd dizzy spell. When she came to, Kady was in the dusty western town of Legend, Colorado -- where a hanging was about to commence! With quick wits and more than a little moxie, Kady halts the proceedings, much to the relief of one Cole Jordan, a tall, thankful, and very appealing man. Now it's Kady's turn to enlist his help to find a way back home. But before long, Kady discovers a passion that she knows can only live in Legend -- until Cole reveals a secret that unites them in a way Kady never could have imagined.

                • Cover of Desperado
                  Desperado

                  Sandra Hill · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventurousemotionalhistorical romance+1 more

                  Major Helen Prescott had always played by the rules. That was why Rafe Santiago had nicknamed her "Prissy" at the military academy years before. Rafe's teasing had made her life miserable back then, and, with his irresistible good looks, he was the man responsible for her one momentary lapse of self-control. So when a stint in the National Guard brought him under her command, Helen laid down the law -- she would stand for no macho moves or bedroom looks in HER platoon. But then a routine sky dive went awry, and all bets were off as they parachuted straight into the 1850 California Gold Rush. Mistaken for a notorious bandit and his infamously sensuous mistress, they found themselves on the wrong side of the law. In a time and place where rules had no meaning, Helen found Rafe's hard, bronzed body strangely comforting, and his piercing blue eyes left her all too willing to share his bedroll. Suddenly, his teasing remarks made her feel all woman, and she was ready to throw caution to the wind if she could spend every night in the arms of her very own... Desperado.

                • Cover of Vampires of El Norte
                  Vampires of El Norte

                  Isabel Cañas · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth america19th centuryemotionalhistorical romance

                  Vampires of El Norte is a 2023 novel by Isabel Cañas. The novel centers on the romance between Nena, daughter of a ranchero, and the vaquero Néstor. The novel takes place during the Mexican–American War, with the addition of vampires.

                • Cover of Beyond the Threshold
                  Beyond the Threshold

                  series · 2 books · 1992

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth americaemotional+2 more

                • Cover of Zulu Nation
                  Zulu Nation

                  series · 1 book · 1892

                  similar byforbidden love19th centuryadventurousemotional

                  H. Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily is set during the rise of the Zulu king Shaka, following Umslopogaas, Shaka's unacknowledged son, and his love for the celebrated beauty Nada. Haggard weaves real Zulu history and figures together with invented characters and supernatural elements, building a tragic story of forbidden love against a backdrop of war and court intrigue. It's a standalone 1892 novel rather than a series.

                • Cover of Kindred
                  Kindred

                  Octavia E. Butler · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryemotionalsurvival

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

                • Cover of A Ghost of a Chance at Love
                  A Ghost of a Chance at Love

                  Terry Spear · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth america19th centuryemotionalhistorical romance

                  Lisa Welsh only wishes to leave a messy divorce behind for a couple of days stay in Salado, Texas but wakes to nightmares and a cowboy in her bed, and she has no earthly idea how he got there. But the situation gets worse when she learns she & apos;s now living in 19th Century Salado. Even more worrisome is the tall dark stranger, and everyone else in town believes she & apos;s some woman named Josephine Rogers who is supposed to be dead. Jack Stanton can & apos;t believe the clerk gave him an occupied room at the Shady Villa Inn, but worse, he was ready to ravage the woman in that bed-until he realized his mistake. Now the woman he thinks is Josephine claims to be some other woman-and though he could never abide by Josephine & apos;s fickle ways, this Lisa Welsh intrigues him like no other. Still, if she isn & apos;t Josephine, he figures he best help her find her way back to where she really belongs no matter how much he wants to keep her with him. Together, Lisa and Jack must solve the mysteries and face the troubles in their worlds or they will never be free to share the love that binds them across the ages.

                • Cover of My Outlaw
                  My Outlaw

                  Linda Lael Miller · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth america19th centuryemotionalhistorical romance

                  Seven-year-old Keighly Barrow never forgot the night she spied a boy her own age at her grandmother's Redemption, Nevada, mansion. He was staring back at her form an antique mirror in the ballroom, standing among gaudily dressed women in an old-time western saloon. Keighly could only discover that his name was Darby Elder--and that he lived a century ago. Twenty years later, engaged to be married, Keighly inherited her grandmother's house. Back before the ballroom mirror, she faces a handsome cowboy whose roughish air radiates trouble. Keighly senses the spirit of Darby Elder--along with an electric charge of passion passing through the glass and into her heart. But old news clips declare this outlaw son of a local madam would die in a shoot-out. Keighly's magical connection to Darby is too strong not to try and save his life--or, if history will not bend, to love him as fiercely as the fleeting moments will allow....

                • Cover of Desperado's Gold
                  Desperado's Gold

                  Linda Winstead Jones · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth america19th centuryadventuroushistorical romance+1 more

                  Jilted at the altar and stranded in the Arizona desert by a blown gasket in her Mustang convertible, Catalina Lane hoped for a tow truck and a lift to the nearest gas station. She certainly didn't expect a real, live desperado, swathed in black, to appear and carry her off into the sunset. But suddenly, catapulted back in time to the days of the Old West, Catalina was transported into a world of blazing six-guns and ladies of the evening. What could she do but go along for the ride? When Jackson Cady, the infamous gunslinger known as "Kid Creede," returned to Baxter, it was to kill a man and earn a reward, not to use his gold to rescue a naïve librarian from the clutches of a greedy madam. He never would have dreamed that the beauty who babbled so incoherently about the twentieth century would have such an impact on him. But the longer he spent with her, the more he found himself captivated by her tender touch and luscious body --- and when he looked deep into her amber eyes, he knew that the passion that smoldered between them was a treasure more precious than any . . . .

                • Cover of Fevre Dream
                  Fevre Dream

                  George R. R. Martin · standalone novel · 1982

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventurous+1 more

                  Fevre Dream is a 1982 vampire novel written by American author George R. R. Martin. It is set on the antebellum Mississippi River, beginning in 1857, and has been described by critics and Martin himself as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain". About writing the novel, Martin said that "It was strongly influenced by the time I spent in Dubuque, Iowa, where river steamboats were once built".

                • Cover of Americana Dreaming
                  Americana Dreaming

                  series · 1 book · 1994

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                • Cover of Veins of Gold
                  Veins of Gold

                  Charlie N. Holmberg · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventuroussurvival+1 more

                  "Abandoned by their father for the gold rush, Gentry and her siblings labor to survive alone in the inhospitable west. When bizarre natural disasters begin wreaking havoc on the land, Gentry discovers a world of magic. Desperate for help, she accepts aid from a mysterious stranger. Winn not only sees the magic, but controls its hunger by feeding it gold--the very thing Gentry's father left to acquire. But the earth's unrest only grows worse, and Gentry's fear leads her to a terrible choice: marry a wealthy man she does not love, or trust in Winn's unpredictable power to save her family."--Amazon.com.

                • Cover of The Wolf Is My Brother
                  The Wolf Is My Brother

                  Chad Oliver · standalone novel · 1967

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventuroussurvivalwesterns

                  Western. Winner of the 1967 Golden Spur Award for Best Historical Novel.

                • Cover of The War Chief
                  The War Chief

                  series · 3 books · 1927

                  completed

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventurouswesterns

                • Cover of A Strange Discovery
                  A Strange Discovery

                  Charles Romyn Dake · standalone novel · 1899

                  similar byforbidden love19th centuryadventuroussurvival

                  A "completion" of Edgar Allan Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). Pym and his companion Dirk Peters are swept into a strange uncharted region in the Antarctic Sea where they find an island utopia inhabited by descendants of fourth-century Romans. The story "combines the further adventures of. Pym with a love story in the manner of Rider Haggard."- Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 1-54. "After Pym and Peters penetrate the veil, they find the city of Hili-li, inhabited by citizens of the Roman empire who fled the barbarian invasions of the fourth century. One ship reached the Antarctic. They represent the height of Greco-Roman culture; though mentally advanced, they have made no practical application of their knowledge. Pym falls in love with Lilama; so great is their devotion that 'the episode of Romeo and Juliet sinks into insignificance' when compared to it. After parental objection, kidnapping by a rival suitor, Ahpilus, and an attack by barbarians, they marry. Within months occurs 'the strange thermal phenomenon' which occasionally devastates the city: the winds shift so that a combination of a hurricane and a blizzard strikes Hili-li. The city is unprepared. Pym goes in search of food and fuel, while Lilama is among those who freeze to death. After her death the Hili-lites permit Pym, highly depressed, and Peters, a troublemaker in Utopia, to depart in a small boat; they are picked up by a ship which takes them to Montevideo, where they separate and never see one another again.

                • Cover of The Host
                  The Host

                  Stephenie Meyer · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar byforbidden loveemotionalsurvivalnorth america

                  The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. But Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves--Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.--From publisher description.

                • Cover of Loving Jack / Jack's History
                  Loving Jack / Jack's History

                  series · 2 books · 1989

                  similar bynorth americaemotional+5 more

                • Cover of Letty Wolf
                  Letty Wolf

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryemotionalhistorical romance+3 more

                • Cover of Dangerous
                  Dangerous

                  Monica Burns · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar byforbidden love19th centuryhistorical romanceemotional

                  "His love could be the death of her. When Constance Athelson, Viscountess Westbury, hides her face to attend the Black Widows Ball, she never expected to find erotic passion in a masked stranger's arms. The torrent of lust isn't enough to drown out her dubious "gift" for seeing visions and talking to the dead. Terrified of being found out, she secures a position cataloguing archaeological artifacts for the Earl of Wyndham—where she encounters a ghost begging her to break a curse plaguing his family. Before his mysterious lover disappeared, Lucien Blakemore was tempted to throw caution aside. Yet he knows one taste of love will unleash the curse that drove his father and brother to murder their wives. When he returns home empty handed and empty hearted, he's shocked to discover his new assistant is the goddess who fled into the night. But could her presence be part of a murderous plot to unearth the location of a secret Egyptian tomb? The answer—or his doom—lies behind the desire shining in his seductress's eyes." – from this book's product page on Samhain's website as of 2016-11-06.

                • Cover of The Lost Clan
                  The Lost Clan

                  series · 4 books · 2005

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                • Cover of The Bandit of Hell's Bend
                  The Bandit of Hell's Bend

                  Edgar Rice Burroughs · standalone novel · 1925

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventurouswesterns

                  The Bandit of Hell's Bend is a Western fiction novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, published in serial form in the Argosy All-Story Weekly in September and October 1924. The book version was first published by A. C. McClurg on June 4, 1925.

                • Cover of The Californios
                  The Californios

                  Louis L'Amour · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bynorth america19th centuryadventurouswesterns+1 more

                  A western with lost-race elements and mysticism.

                • Cover of The Dark Artifices
                  The Dark Artifices

                  series · 4 books · 2016

                  part of The Mortal Instruments

                  similar byforbidden lovenorth americaemotional+1 more

                  The Dark Artifices is a trilogy written by Cassandra Clare. The series is chronologically the fourth series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles and a sequel to The Mortal Instruments. It is set in Los Angeles. The series consists of three books: Lady Midnight, Lord of Shadows and Queen of Air and Darkness, in that particular order. Centered around the protagonist, Emma Carstairs, the series follows her journey as a Shadowhunter at the Los Angeles Institute, and her life with her best-friend and parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, and his family. The series is about a sacred bond of "parabatai", two bonded Shadowhunters, and it is more valuable than any bond in this world. This bond makes the two more powerful and strong, but there is only one drawback - it is forbidden to fall in love with your parabatai. It so happens that Emma and Julian, two parabatai, have fallen in love. The Dark Artifices is a trilogy about their struggle against their enemies and how the two protagonists deal with their forbidden love and the resulting consequences. The series is told from the point-of-view of the various different characters in the story.