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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 Locked Within

anchored on:urban fantasyreincarnationnorth americacontemporaryamnesiabig city+1 more

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 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 Anita Blake
                  Anita Blake

                  series · 42 books · 1993

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                  Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is a series of urban fantasy novels, short stories, and comic books by Laurell K. Hamilton. The books have sold more than six million copies; many have made The New York Times Best Seller list.

                • Cover of The Dresden Files
                  The Dresden Files

                  series · 56 books · 2000

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                  The Dresden Files is an urban fantasy series written by American author Jim Butcher. The novels are narrated from the first-person perspective of Harry Dresden, a private detective and wizard, as he investigates supernatural disturbances in contemporary Chicago. The first entry, Storm Front, was published in 2000 by Roc Books.

                • Cover of The Curse Workers
                  The Curse Workers

                  series · 3 books · 2010

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                  Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy is set in an alternate America where 'curse work' — magic that harms or transforms through touch — is illegal, enforced through gloves and Prohibition-era-style crime families. It follows Cassel Sharpe, the only non-worker in a family of con artists and workers, as he tries to stay out of his family's schemes despite his own hidden connection to their world. The series runs from White Cat through two further novels.

                • Cover of The Morganville Vampires
                  The Morganville Vampires

                  series · 40 books · 2006

                  completed

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                  The Morganville Vampires is a series of young adult urban fantasy/vampire novels written by Rachel Caine. The novels feature Claire Danvers, a student at Texas Prairie University, and her housemates in the vampire-controlled city of Morganville, Texas. While the mayor of Morganville is human, the population co-exist with a group of vampires. Morganville is also home to an unusually large number of second-hand thrift stores.

                • Cover of Olympus Bound
                  Olympus Bound

                  series · 3 books · 2016

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                • Cover of Meredith Gentry
                  Meredith Gentry

                  series · 10 books · 2000

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                  The Merry Gentry series is a series of urban fantasy novels by New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. The series is told through the lens of the titular character Meredith "Merry" Gentry, a faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries exist and are known to the general public. The first book in the series, A Kiss of Shadows, was released by Del Rey on October 3, 2000. There are currently nine books in the series.

                • Cover of Cal Leandros
                  Cal Leandros

                  series · 13 books · 2006

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                  The Cal Leandros series is a series of urban fantasy novels by American author Rob Thurman about the fictional character of Caliban "Cal" Leandros. The first novel, Nightlife, was published on March 7, 2006, through Roc Fantasy.

                • Cover of Sign of the Zodiac
                  Sign of the Zodiac

                  series · 9 books · 2007

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                • Cover of Faerie Tale
                  Faerie Tale

                  Raymond E. Feist · standalone novel · 1988

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                  Faerie Tale is a supernatural thriller, falling within the subgenre of contemporary fantasy, by American writer Raymond E. Feist, first published in 1988.

                • Cover of Felix Castor
                  Felix Castor

                  series · 7 books · 2006

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                  Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels follow a freelance exorcist working London's supernatural underside, taking paying jobs to banish ghosts and bind demons in a city where the dead don't always stay quiet. The opener, The Devil You Know, sends Castor into a museum haunting that spirals into a hunt by rival ghosts and demons all keen to be the one that finally kills him. Across six books the series mixes hardboiled detective plotting with occult horror.

                • Cover of Alchemy of Secrets
                  Alchemy of Secrets

                  series · 1 book · 2025

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                  Alchemy of Secrets follows Holland St. James, a young woman convinced that magic is real, who tracks down a local urban legend called the Watch Man and is told she will die at midnight the next day unless she finds an ancient object called the Alchemical Heart. Pulled into a hidden magical Los Angeles alongside a stranger who claims her missing sister sent him to protect her, Holland has to work out who is lying to her before the clock runs out. Stephanie Garber wrote it as a standalone 2025 novel rather than the start of a numbered series.

                • Cover of Дозоры / Watch
                  Дозоры / Watch

                  series · 6 books · 1998

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                  Sergei Lukyanenko's Watch novels are set among the Others, humans with supernatural gifts who split into the Night Watch, policing dark forces, and the Day Watch, policing the light ones, under a truce that keeps their ancient war frozen in an uneasy bureaucratic peace. Each book follows the Night Watch magician Anton Gorodetsky through a case that keeps threatening to unbalance that truce for good. Starting in Moscow, the series expands across six novels into other cities and a wider view of how the truce actually works.

                • Cover of The Legendborn Cycle
                  The Legendborn Cycle

                  series · 3 books · 2020

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                  Tracy Deonn's Legendborn Cycle follows Bree Matthews, a Black teenager who enrolls in an early-college program and stumbles into a secret society descended from Arthurian legend operating alongside her North Carolina campus. The society's magic turns out to be entangled with her own family's hidden history and her mother's recent death. Over the trilogy Bree has to decide how much of that inherited legacy, and its exclusions, she wants to claim.

                • Cover of Lore
                  Lore

                  Alexandra Bracken · standalone novel · 2021

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                  Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality. Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man—now a god—responsible for their deaths. Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek her out: Castor, a childhood friend Lore believed to be dead, and Athena, one of the last of the original gods, now gravely wounded. The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and a way to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to rejoin the hunt, binding her fate to Athena's, will come at a deadly cost—and it may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

                • Cover of The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicles
                  The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicles

                  series · 3 books · 2011

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                • Cover of Mulengro: A Romany Tale
                  Mulengro: A Romany Tale

                  Charles de Lint · standalone novel · 1985

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                  The Gypsies live in the shadows of the city, blending in with Canadian society but never adapting to it, cling to the traditional Romany ways. Now a series of bizarre murders have baffled the police - each death somehow connected with the city's elusive Gypsy community. The police are looking for a human murderer. The Romany know better. They know the name of the darkness that hunts them down, one by one. He Who Walks With Ghosts - Mulengro.

                • Cover of Case Files of Justis Fearsson
                  Case Files of Justis Fearsson

                  series · 6 books · 2014

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                • Cover of The Hollows
                  The Hollows

                  series · 39 books · 2004

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                • Cover of Cromm
                  Cromm

                  Kenneth C. Flint · standalone novel · 1990

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                  From the Front Flap of the Doubleday HB: It began with the dreams... visions filled with strange and disturbing specters from a time long ago. Colin McMahon has always been an easygoing artist who never takes his life too seriously - no great ambitions, no long-term relationships, no commitments. But the images that have begun to torment his nights have changed all that forever. In his dreams, he finds himself riding across the rolling hills of a battle-torn land, reliving the memories of a fearless young warrior who shares his name. He loses his heart to the image of a beautiful woman as brave as she is fair. And he helplessly witnesses the brutal rituals of a savage cult that makes blood offerings to a dark and cruel deity called Cromm Cruaich, the Crooked God. At first Colin dismisses the visions as the product of an overactive imagination... until they begin to invade his waking life. A mysterious stranger appears to taunt him with hints of awesome powers. His partner is viciously attacked by an inhuman wraith. And nightmare creatures wreak bloody havoc on the streets of the city. Seeking the truth, Colin sets out on a pilgrimage to Ireland, home of his ancestors. There, in a village untouched by the centuries, he discovers the living woman of his dreams and learns that the ancient cult of the evil god Cromm has arisen again, plotting to place the world under its terrible dominion. Now, in a desperate attempt to ransom humanity from the power of the Crooked God, Colin must call upon the spirit of his warrior ancestor to help unleash the might of a long-buried holy relic. For, in an age without peace, without hope, without faith, what can stand against the forces of violence, cruelty, and fear?

                • Cover of Certain Dark Things
                  Certain Dark Things

                  Silvia Moreno-Garcia · standalone novel · 2016

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                  "Certain Dark Things combines elements of Latin American mythology with a literary voice that leads readers on an exhilarating and fast-paced journey. Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Here in the city, heavily policed to keep the creatures of the night at bay, Domingo is another trash-picking street kid, just hoping to make enough to survive. Then he meets Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers. Domingo is smitten. He clings to her like a barnacle until Atl relents and decides to let him stick around. But Atl's problems, Nick and Rodrigo, have come to find her. When they start to raise the body count in the city, it attracts the attention of police officers, local crime bosses, and the vampire community. Atl has to get out before Mexico City is upended, and her with it. In 2015, Silvia's debut, Signal to Noise, was named on seven year's best lists: B & N's Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, RT, BookRiot, Buzzfeed, i09, Vice, and Tor.com. Certain Dark Things was also listed on B & N's Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog as one of 42 books they can't wait to read in 2016 and on io9 as one of 40 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books That Will Rock Your World In 2016!"--

                • Cover of The Great Cities
                  The Great Cities

                  series · 3 books · 2016

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                  N. K. Jemisin's Great Cities duology imagines that great cities can awaken as living, sentient avatars defending themselves against extradimensional threats. It began as her short story 'The City Born Great' before expanding into The City We Became (2020) — her first novel after completing the Broken Earth trilogy — and its sequel, The World We Make.

                • CV
                  Chicagoland Vampires Universe

                  series · 25 books · 2009

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                • Cover of Witch Hunt (Viguié)
                  Witch Hunt (Viguié)

                  series · 3 books · 2012

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                • Cover of Sunfail
                  Sunfail

                  Steven Savile · standalone novel · 2015

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                  Former Special Forces agent, Jake Carter now works for NYC Subway as an electrician. When he sees a few men spraying graffiti on the subway walls, he discovers they aren't tags, but a secret, lost language inciting violence and destruction on an epic scale.