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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 Losing the Plot

anchored on:fantasyangelsbritish islesrenaissance and early modernyoung adulttime travel+4 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 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 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 A Traveller in Time
                  A Traveller in Time

                  Alison Uttley · standalone novel · 1939

                  similar bybritish islesrenaissance and early modernfantasytime travelcoming of age

                  Timeslip story featuring the historical plot to free Mary Queen of Scots, or to murder, or both? Among more than 100 novels and collections, "Her most famous and successful novel for older children, A Traveller in Time (1939), is a fantasy based again on her rural childhood, concerning a local plot to murder Mary Queen of Scots in 1569 and a girl from the 20th century who uncontrollably Timeslips back 400 years to witness the tragedy." (underscore represents linked cross-reference) --SFE: Encyclopedia of Fantasy, biographical entry by Jo Fletcher "Based on the Babington Plot of Anthony Babington at Dethick, near her family home, this romance mixes dream and historical fact in a story about a 20th-century girl who is transported to the 16th century, becoming involved in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots from nearby Wingfield Manor." --Wikipedia, "Alison Uttley"

                • Cover of The Wind in the Willows Universe
                  The Wind in the Willows Universe

                  series · 17 books · 1908

                  similar byfantasybritish islesfriendship+1 more

                • Cover of Angels Unlimited
                  Angels Unlimited

                  series · 12 books · 2001

                  similar byfantasyangelslightheartedcoming of ageyoung adult

                  Angels Unlimited is the title of a series of novels written for teenagers by the British author Annie Dalton. The protagonist is Melanie Beeby, who died on the day after her thirteenth birthday and soon found herself at the Angel Academy in heaven. As of July 2013, there are twelve novels, three omnibus books, and now twelve updated and revised ebooks. The overall title of the series has also been changed to Angel Academy.

                • Cover of Stig of the Dump
                  Stig of the Dump

                  Clive King · standalone novel · 1963

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyadventurousfriendshipcoming of age

                  Stig of the Dump is a children's novel by Clive King which was first published in the United Kingdom in 1963. It is regarded as a modern children's classic and is often read in schools. It was illustrated by Edward Ardizzone and has been adapted twice for television, in 1981 and in 2002. It was featured in a broadcast as an adaptation on BBC Home Service for schools in November 1964, and later on the BBC series Blue Peter.

                • Cover of Fabian Time Fantasies
                  Fabian Time Fantasies

                  series · 2 books · 1908

                  completed

                  similar bybritish islesfantasytime travelcoming of age+2 more

                  E. Nesbit's Edwardian time-travel duology follows two children who use a magic device to slip between their own era and the past. The House of Arden sends young Edred and his sister into English history in search of a family treasure, while its sequel, Harding's Luck, follows a poor orphan boy who travels back to the reign of James I and briefly lives another child's privileged life, before choosing to return and help the man who raised him, in a story pointedly concerned with poverty and welfare.

                • Cover of The Dark Is Rising
                  The Dark Is Rising

                  series · 5 books · 1965

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyadventurous+2 more

                  The Dark Is Rising Sequence is a series of five contemporary fantasy novels for older children and young adults that were written by the British author Susan Cooper and published from 1965 to 1977. The first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, was originally conceived as a stand-alone novel, and the sequence gets its name from the second novel in the series, The Dark Is Rising. The Dark Is Rising Sequence is used as an overarching title in several omnibus, boxed-set, and coordinated editions; but the title of The Dark Is Rising is also used for the whole series.

                • Cover of The Devil and His Boy
                  The Devil and His Boy

                  Anthony Horowitz · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar bybritish islesrenaissance and early modernadventurouscoming of ageyoung adult

                  The Devil and His Boy is a 1998 young adult novel by Anthony Horowitz. The book is set in Tudor times and follows the adventures of a young boy as he meets several influential people from that time period.

                • Cover of Switchers
                  Switchers

                  series · 3 books · 1997

                  similar byfantasybritish islesadventurouscoming of ageyoung adult+1 more

                  Kate Thompson's Switchers trilogy follows Tess, a Dublin teenager who can shapeshift into any animal but will lose the power forever on her fifteenth birthday. In the opening book she and a fellow Switcher named Kevin race to stop ancient Arctic creatures from plunging the world into a new ice age, transforming into ever stranger shapes along the way. The two further volumes, Midnight's Choice and Wild Blood, continue their adventures on borrowed time, blending contemporary Irish settings with animal-shapeshifting fantasy for young readers.

                • Cover of Gemma Doyle
                  Gemma Doyle

                  series · 4 books · 2003

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyfriendshipcoming of ageyoung adult

                  The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is a trilogy of fantasy novels by American writer Libba Bray. They are told from the perspective of Gemma Doyle, a girl in the late nineteenth century. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy consists of three books: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing.

                • Cover of Five Children Universe
                  Five Children Universe

                  series · 27 books · 1902

                  completed

                  similar byfantasybritish isles+4 more

                  Two separate modern continuations of E. Nesbit's Psammead stories were written decades apart by different authors: Helen Cresswell's The Return of the Psammead (1992) brings the wish-granting sand fairy back for a new set of children, while Kate Saunders's Five Children on the Western Front (2014) follows the now-grown Lamb and his siblings as the First World War arrives, in a more somber sequel to Nesbit's original trilogy. Neither book is by Nesbit herself, and the two have no direct connection to each other beyond both drawing on her creation. Later writers have kept returning to Nesbit's premise long after her own trilogy ended.

                • Cover of Tangled in Time
                  Tangled in Time

                  series · 2 books · 2019

                  similar byrenaissance and early modernbritish islesadventuroustime travelcoming of age+2 more

                • Cover of Un Lun Dun
                  Un Lun Dun

                  China Miéville · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byfantasyadventurousbritish islescoming of ageyoung adult

                  Un Lun Dun is a young adult fantasy novel by China Miéville, released in 2007. The title is derived from 'UnLondon,' the name of the alternate realm where the book is set. It also contains illustrations by Miéville. It was first released in January 2007. The novel also won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

                • Cover of Tyger
                  Tyger

                  S. F. Said · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyadventurousfriendshipcoming of age

                  "Adam has found something incredible in a rubbish dump in London. A mysterious, mythical, magical animal. A TYGER. And the tyger is in danger. Adam and his friend Zadie are determined to help, but it isn't just the tyger's life at stake. Their whole world is on the verge of destruction. Can they learn to use their powers before it's too late?" (toppsta.com)

                • Cover of Skellig
                  Skellig

                  David Almond · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyfriendshipcoming of age+1 more

                  Skellig is a children's novel by the British author David Almond, published by Hodder in 1998. It was the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and it won the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British author. In 2007, it placed third in the "Carnegie of Carnegies", after Northern Lights and Tom's Midnight Garden. In the U.S., it was a runner up for the Michael L. Printz Award, which recognises one work of young adult fiction annually. Since publication, it has also been adapted into a play, an opera, and a film. In December of 2011, a prequel, My Name is Mina was published. William Blake's poems feature in the book, the play and the film.

                • Cover of Out of Time
                  Out of Time

                  John Marsden · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byfantasyadventuroustime travelcoming of ageyoung adult+1 more

                  James, a strange, silent boy, makes the acquaintance of old Mr. Woodford, a physicist who constructs a mysterious black box, but when the box comes into the boy's possession, it draws him into a magical and dangerous world, in and out of time.

                • Cover of The Perilous Gard
                  The Perilous Gard

                  Elizabeth Marie Pope · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bybritish islesrenaissance and early modernfantasycoming of age+1 more

                  In 1558 while imprisoned in a remote castle, a young girl becomes involved in a series of events that lead to an underground labyrinth peopled by the last practitioners of druidic magic.

                • Cover of Tom's Midnight Garden
                  Tom's Midnight Garden

                  Philippa Pearce · standalone novel · 1958

                  similar bybritish islesfantasyfriendshipcoming of age+1 more

                  Tom's Midnight Garden is a children's fantasy novel by English author Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. The story is about a twelve-year-old boy, Tom, who, while staying with his aunt and uncle, slips out at midnight and discovers a magical, mysterious Victorian garden where he befriends a young girl named Hatty. The novel has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, television, cinema, and the stage.

                • Cover of The Ghosts
                  The Ghosts

                  Antonia Barber · standalone novel · 1969

                  similar byfantasybritish islestime travelfriendshipyoung adult+1 more

                  A brother and sister meet two strange children in the garden of their new home with whom they return to another century.

                • Cover of His Dark Materials
                  His Dark Materials

                  series · 8 books · 1995

                  part of His Dark Materials Universe

                  similar byfantasyadventurouscoming of ageyoung adult

                  His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.

                • Cover of The Owl Service
                  The Owl Service

                  Alan Garner · standalone novel · 1967

                  similar bybritish islesfantasycoming of ageyoung adult

                  During a summer vacation in a secluded Welsh valley, three young people find themselves driven by the spirits of three mythical lovers to reenact an ancient tragedy.

                • Cover of Dodger
                  Dodger

                  Terry Pratchett · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bybritish islesadventurouscoming of ageyoung adult+2 more

                  Dodger is a novel written by Terry Pratchett, set in early Victorian London, and inspired by Charles Dickens's character the Artful Dodger. The book was released on 13 September 2012 in the UK.

                • Cover of The Girl from Everywhere
                  The Girl from Everywhere

                  series · 2 books · 2016

                  similar byfantasyadventuroustime travelcoming of ageyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth
                  Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth

                  Lloyd Alexander · standalone novel · 1963

                  similar byfantasyadventurouslightheartedtime travel+1 more

                  Jason and his magic cat Gareth travel through time to visit countries all over the world during different periods of history.

                • Cover of Fire Bringer
                  Fire Bringer

                  David Clement-Davies · standalone novel · 1999

                  similar byfantasyadventurousbritish islescoming of ageyoung adult

                  Fire Bringer is a young adult fantasy novel by David Clement-Davies published in 1999 in the United Kingdom and 2000 in the United States. It tells the story of Rannoch, a red deer whose life is the subject of an old forest prophecy.