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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 Leopard / Mind Kill

anchored on:thriller & suspenseour worldtenserevengebig city

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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 The Shining Girls
                  The Shining Girls

                  Lauren Beukes · standalone novel · 2013

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                  The Shining Girls is a science fiction thriller novel by South African author Lauren Beukes. The book centers on a mysterious drifter who murders the titular "shining girls" and one victim's attempts to expose him.

                • Cover of Nicholas Linnear
                  Nicholas Linnear

                  series · 2 books · 1994

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                • Cover of Assassin
                  Assassin

                  Shaun Hutson · standalone novel · 1988

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                  London was in the grip of its bloodiest bout of gang warfare for two years. Shootings in the street. Car chases and torture. Into this world of corruption, violence, madness and death came the Assassin. A force more powerful than vengeance, more lethal than a lorry full of high-velocity weapons and more terryfying than any nightmare..... Shock horror at its best.

                • Cover of The Cure
                  The Cure

                  Douglas E. Richards · standalone novel · 2013

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                  A young woman, Erin Palmer, witnesses a psychopath murder her parents and sister. The bloody trauma propels her into a scientific career. She is studying the microbiology of the psychopathic brain, and is on a quest to discover the DNA which engenders the cerebral disease. Teaming up with a powerful but eccentric billionaire, she at last isolates the deadly DNA and is on the verge of finding a cure. But things and people are not what they seem. Both the young man she thinks she loves and the tycoon who has befriended her have a sinister side she did not understand. Erin is ensnared in a global conspiracy which may culminate in humanity's utter destruction.

                • Cover of The Brigade
                  The Brigade

                  John Shirley · standalone novel · 1981

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                  In the shadows the Saturday Night Killer is waiting. He's struck thirteen times, each knife murder sicker than the last. The Brigade was formed to clean up the town of Salton and run the killer off the streets. But the vigilantes' drunken shotgun rule is hiding something. It's Saturday night and the lights are going out one by one. Out there in the dark the killer is ready..........

                • Cover of Marc Dane
                  Marc Dane

                  series · 1 book · 2018

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                • Cover of Kronos
                  Kronos

                  Jeremy Robinson · standalone novel · 2009

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                  "Two years after his wife's death, oceanographer and former navy SEAL, Atticus Young, attempts to reconcile with his rebellious daughter, Giona, by taking her on the scuba dive of a lifetime--swimming with a pod of peaceful humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine. But the beauty of the sea belies a terror from the deep--a horrific creature as immense as it is ancient. There is no blood, no scream, no fight. Giona is swallowed whole by the massive jaws. Atticus' inconsolable grief turns to an unquenchable thirst for revenge. Drawn by the spectacle, Trevor Manfred, a ruthless billionaire, approaches Atticus with a proposition: Trevor will make available all the advanced technology of his heavily armed mega-yacht, the Titan, to aid Atticus in his death-quest. In return, Trevor is to receive the beast's corpse as the ultimate hunting trophy ..."--Page 4 of cover.

                • Cover of A Love Like Blood
                  A Love Like Blood

                  Marcus Sedgwick · standalone novel · 2014

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                  "In 1944, just days after the liberation of Paris, Charles Jackson sees something horrific: a man in a dark tunnel, apparently drinking the blood of a murdered woman. Terrified, he does nothing, telling himself afterward that worse tragedies happen during war. Seven years later he returns to the city--and sees the same man dining in the company of a fascinating, beautiful young woman. When they leave the restaurant, Charles decides to follow. A Love Like Blood is a dark, compelling thriller about how a man's life can change in a moment and about where the desire for truth--and revenge--can lead"--Page [2] of cover.

                • Cover of The Rick Keller Project
                  The Rick Keller Project

                  series · 2 books · 2014

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                • Cover of Cold in July
                  Cold in July

                  Joe R. Lansdale · standalone novel · 1989

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                  Cold in July is a 1989 American crime novel written by Joe R. Lansdale.

                • Cover of Six of Crows
                  Six of Crows

                  series · 3 books · 2015

                  part of Grishaverse

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                  Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology (2015-2016) follows a crew of six criminal teenagers in Ketterdam, a city modeled on the Dutch Republic, as they pull off a near-impossible heist and then deal with its fallout. Told from multiple points of view, the books lean on the found-family bond between the crew members as much as the caper plotting, and sit within Bardugo's wider Grishaverse alongside her Shadow and Bone books.

                • Cover of A Sense of Shadow
                  A Sense of Shadow

                  Kate Wilhelm · standalone novel · 1981

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                  From back cover of Timescape Books paperback August 1982: They came to his deathbed. Four dutiful children. Each the child of a different mother. Each mother the victim of a tragic accident, unsolved murder, mysterious disappearance. As he sank away they glowered their hatred. It was a hatred he expected, and his revenge was well planned. He left a multi-million dollar legacy, bearing a ghoulish price tag. They could pay with their sanity, or their psyches, or their souls. They would be part of an experiment... something to do with brain waves. It would be a great service to science, they were told. Just one last little joke on his kids, and they swore they could hear him laughing... all the way to hell.

                • Cover of Deadly Memoir
                  Deadly Memoir

                  Ardath Mayhar · standalone novel · 2009

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                  When Margaret Thackrey, ex-government agent and writer, decides to pen her memoirs, she unwittingly gets the attention of a vicious assassin - a man whose nefarious deeds she'd nearly uncovered during her service. Now he must stop the publication of her book before his true character is revealed. He murders Margaret's husband, and stalks her from Oregon to Texas, where she must finally confront her past - and a determined, stone-cold killer!

                • Cover of The Manhattan Hunt Club
                  The Manhattan Hunt Club

                  John Saul · standalone novel · 2001

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                  The Manhattan Hunt Club is a thriller horror novel by John Saul, published by Ballantine Books on July 31, 2001. The novel follows the story of Jeff Converse, who is falsely convicted of a brutal crime and finds himself trapped in a secret society called the Manhattan Hunt Club.

                • Cover of Haterz
                  Haterz

                  James Goss · standalone novel · 2015

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                  A man starts killing people who annoy him on the internet.

                • Cover of The Midnight Room
                  The Midnight Room

                  Ed Gorman · standalone novel · 2009

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                  A blackmailer is playing with fire when he makes a terrifying serial killer his target.

                • Cover of End of the World Blues
                  End of the World Blues

                  Jon Courtenay Grimwood · standalone novel · 2006

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                  "Kit Nouveau didn't escape himself when he fled to Japan. Now running a biker bar in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, he's also sleeping with the wife of a High Yakusa ganglord. All things considered, being held up at gunpoint isn't a complete shock. The pale girl in the red cloak appearing from nowhere and punching an ivory spike into his attacker's head on the other hand." "Nijie has stolen fifteen million dollars, she's on the run, she's just killed a man and she has a cat who knows more than it should. It's a lot to deal with when you haven't even left school." "But Nijie is also Lady Neku, and in a sentient castle at the end of the world Lady Neku otherwise known as Baroness Nawa-no-ukiyo. Countess High Strange and chatelaine of Schlass Omga realizes that Kit has stolen some of her memories. What happens to a man who finally realises he can't outrun himself? Kit Nouveau is about to find out."--BOOK JACKET. "Kit Nouveau figured he'd already come to the end of the world. An Iraqi war veteran, expatriate, and part owner of Pirate Mary's, the best Irish bar in Tokyo, Kit had settled down to await the inevitable with barely a whimper. It wasn't exactly how Kit thought he'd end up, and he was right." "It's going to end up a lot worse." "A teenage runaway with fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and a taste for cosplay is about to save Kit's life in a lethal swirl of scarlet and bridal lace. Lady Neku, a.k.a. Countess of High Strange, has her own dangerous destiny to fulfill and it's mysteriously connected to Kit's ravaged past. Now Kit's only hope for redemption is to save an ex-girlfriend he tragically failed once before. But everyone says it's already too late. And she's left behind only one ominous clue: her suicide note."--BOOK JACKET.

                • Cover of Retribution
                  Retribution

                  Katie Reus · standalone novel · 2015

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                  "Nika and Alena Brennan will do anything to kill a vicious Russian crime boss and they're using his only son to get to him. Yet, when the time comes to execute their plan, psychic Nika hesitates due to an unexpected entanglement with sexy security expert Declan Gallagher. When her sister is kidnapped and all their carefully laid plans go awry, Nika must depend on Declan and her mortal enemy's son to get her sister back"--Page 4 of cover

                • Cover of The Boys from Brazil
                  The Boys from Brazil

                  Ira Levin · standalone novel · 1976

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                  The Boys from Brazil is a 1976 thriller novel by American writer Ira Levin. It was made into a film of the same title that was released in 1978.

                • Cover of Unspeakable
                  Unspeakable

                  Graham Masterton · standalone novel · 2002

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                  Using her talent for lip-reading to help the police investigate the disappearances of a string of women, little does Holly Summers, a deaf child welfare officer, suspect that one of the enemies she's made in her job has vowed a supernatural vengeance on her, and the horror begins when the one person Holly is living for is targeted.

                • Cover of The Eyes of Heisenberg
                  The Eyes of Heisenberg

                  Frank Herbert · standalone novel · 1966

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                  Tens of thousands of years in the future, Earth is ruled by the Optimen, a genetically engineered aristocracy that has made itself functionally immortal, while ordinary people, the Folk, live under strict reproductive control. When Harvey and Lizbeth Durant arrive to have their embryo genetically screened, the examining doctor finds something in the child no one has seen in a very long time: real potential for both fertility and life span, traits the Optimen have arrogated to themselves. Rather than destroy the embryo as policy demands, the doctor hesitates, setting off a chain of surveillance, suspicion and resistance. A tightly wound Frank Herbert thriller about genetic caste and rebellion.

                • Cover of Cold Fury
                  Cold Fury

                  series · 3 books · 2012

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                • Cover of Pretty Little Devils
                  Pretty Little Devils

                  Nancy Holder · standalone novel · 2006

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                  Hazel Stone wants nothing more than to be a part of the hottest clique in school, the Pretty Little Devils, but she's stuck at a lunch table full of high school C-listers. Hazel has resigned herself to life as a nobody—when suddenly everything changes. The PLDs invite Hazel to one of the group's famous parties, held at the site of one of their babysitting jobs. Before Hazel knows it, she's in with the in crowd—and she couldn't be more thrilled!But nothing turns out the way she expects. Especially when one her classmates becomes jealous of her newfound status—deadly jealous.Author Nancy Holder weaves a wicked tale about the price of popularity, and having the kind of friends some girls would just die for.

                • TS
                  The Specialist (Cutter)

                  series · 11 books · 1984

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