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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 Making Waves

anchored on:fantasyangelsotherworldyoung adultparanormalcoming of age+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 centered on witches and the practice of witchcraft — covens, hedge magic, familiars, and the witch's place in her community.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of Angels Unlimited
                  Angels Unlimited

                  series · 12 books · 2001

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                  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 Enchanted Forest
                  Enchanted Forest

                  series · 7 books · 1985

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                  Patricia Collins Wrede is an American author of fantasy literature. She is known for her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series for young adults, which was voted number 84 in NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list.

                • Cover of Jinx
                  Jinx

                  Meg Cabot · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bylightheartedfantasycoming of ageparanormalyoung adult

                  Jinx is a 2007 young adult novel.

                • Cover of Coffeehouse Angel
                  Coffeehouse Angel

                  Suzanne Selfors · standalone novel · 2009

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                  Sixteen-year-old Katrina's kindness to a man she finds sleeping behind her grandmother's coffeehouse leads to a strange reward as Malcolm, who is actually a teenage guardian angel, insists on rewarding her by granting her deepest wish.

                • Cover of The Phantom Tollbooth
                  The Phantom Tollbooth

                  Norton Juster · standalone novel · 1961

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                  A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words and numbers provides a cure for his boredom.

                • Cover of The Unfinished Angel
                  The Unfinished Angel

                  Sharon Creech · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bylightheartedangelsfantasy+1 more

                  Publisher's Description: "In the ancient stone tower of the Casa Rosa, in a tiny village high in the Swiss Alps, life for one angel has been the same, well, for as long as she (or he?) can remember. Until Zola arrives, a determined American girl who wears three skirts all at once. For neighbors who have been longtime enemies, children who have been lost, and villagers who have been sleepily living their lives: hold on. Zola and the angel are about to collide. Figs start flying, dogs start arfing, and the whole village begins to wake up. Zola is a girl with a mission. And our angel has been without one—till now."

                • Cover of Piratica
                  Piratica

                  series · 3 books · 2004

                  completed

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                  The Piratica Series is a series of young adult fantasy novels by Tanith Lee.

                • Cover of The Thief of Always
                  The Thief of Always

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar byfantasycoming of ageotherworld+1 more

                  Ten-year-old Harvey Swick is bored out of his mind when a stranger named Rictus offers him a way out: Holiday House, a place where every season of the year -- Christmas, Halloween, summer -- arrives in a single glorious day, one after another. Once inside, Harvey meets fellow children Wendell and Lulu, the elderly caretaker Mrs. Griffin and her cats, and settles into a routine of enchantment that starts to feel too perfect. Their host, the mysterious Mr. Hood, never appears, rumors about a figure called Carna keep surfacing, and something in the nearby lake is very wrong. One of Clive Barker's best-known standalone books, written for younger readers.

                • Cover of Frogkisser!
                  Frogkisser!

                  Garth Nix · standalone novel · 2017

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                  Princess Anya has a big problem: Duke Rikard, her step-stepfather is an evil wizard who wants to rule the kingdom and has a habit of changing people into frogs, and her older sister Morven, the heir, is a wimp--so with the help of the librarian Gotfried (who turns into an owl when he is upset), and the Royal Dogs, she must find away to defeat Rikard, save her sister, and maybe even turn Prince Denholm back into a human being.

                • Cover of Little Wings
                  Little Wings

                  series · 5 books · 2011

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                • Cover of Castle Hangnail
                  Castle Hangnail

                  Ursula Vernon · standalone novel · 2015

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                  When little twelve-year-old Molly arrives at Castle Hangnail to fill the vacancy for a wicked witch, the minions who dwell there have no choice but to give her the job, and at first it seems she'll be able to keep the castle open, but Molly has quite a few secrets that could cause trouble.

                • Cover of The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian
                  The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian

                  Lloyd Alexander · standalone novel · 1970

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                  When he loses his place as fourth fiddler in a noble household, Sebastian sets out into the world to seek his fortune.

                • Cover of Dot and Tot of Merryland
                  Dot and Tot of Merryland

                  L. Frank Baum · standalone novel · 1901

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                  Dot and Tot of Merryland is a 1901 novel by L. Frank Baum. After Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he wrote this story about the adventures of a little girl named Dot and a little boy named Tot in a land reached by floating on a river that flowed through a tunnel. The land was called Merryland and was split into seven valleys. The book was illustrated by artist W. W. Denslow. He had illustrated three previous Baum books that were advertised in Dot and Tot, Father Goose: His Book, The Songs of Father Goose, as well as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

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

                  series · 17 books · 1908

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                • Cover of The Ordinary Princess
                  The Ordinary Princess

                  M. M. Kaye · standalone novel · 1980

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                  WorldCat: At her christening, a princess is given the gift of "ordinariness" by a fairy, and the consequences of that eventually take her to a nearby palace where, having run away to become a fourteenth assistant kitchen maid, she meets the prince for her.

                • Cover of Angelbound Short Fiction
                  Angelbound Short Fiction

                  series · 6 books · 2024

                  part of Angelbound

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                • Cover of The Sign of the Cat
                  The Sign of the Cat

                  Lynne Jonell · standalone novel · 2015

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                  Duncan is a very smart boy growing up in a fishing village. The problem is that his mother encourages him to be perfectly average: she insists that he only get mediocre grades and avoid extra attention. His special talent is the ability to talk to cats but Duncan longs more than anything for academic success.

                • Cover of Santa Claus
                  Santa Claus

                  series · 3 books · 1902

                  completed

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                • Cover of Have Sword, Will Travel
                  Have Sword, Will Travel

                  series · 2 books · 2017

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                • Cover of The Firework-Maker's Daughter
                  The Firework-Maker's Daughter

                  Philip Pullman · standalone novel · 1995

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                  The Firework-Maker's Daughter is a children's novella by Philip Pullman. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Doubleday in 1995. The first UK edition was illustrated by Nick Harris; a subsequent edition published in the United States was illustrated by S. Saelig Gallagher.

                • Cover of The Princess and the Goblin
                  The Princess and the Goblin

                  series · 2 books · 1871

                  completed

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                • Cover of At the Back of the North Wind
                  At the Back of the North Wind

                  series · 2 books · 1869

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                • Cover of Song of the Lioness
                  Song of the Lioness

                  series · 5 books · 1983

                  part of Tortall

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                  The Song of the Lioness is a young adult series of fantasy novels published in the 1980s by Tamora Pierce. The series consists of four books: Alanna: The First Adventure (1983), In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986) and Lioness Rampant (1988).

                • Cover of With a Little Luck
                  With a Little Luck

                  Marissa Meyer · standalone novel · 2024

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                  Jude is determined to fly under the radar. He just wants to draw his comics, host regular D&D night with his friends, work at his parents’ vinyl record store, and escape high school as unscathed as possible. That is, until the night he comes across a mysterious twenty-sided dice and finds himself inexplicably gifted with a bout of supernatural good luck. Suddenly, everything Jude has ever wanted is within reach. His first art submission is accepted to his favorite fanzine. He helps his friend’s song become a finalist in a songwriting competition. And he’s the 100th caller to a local radio contest, winning him a pair of coveted concert tickets, which he uses to ask out the popular girl he’s been crushing on since elementary school. For a few blissful weeks, he feels invincible. But when he loses the magic dice at a local music festival, his luck takes a turn for the worse. He struggles to reclaim his good fortune while fighting off long-buried feelings for his best friend―who is definitely not the girl he’s supposed to be in love with. Can Jude risk stepping into the spotlight long enough to win the true girl of his dreams? Or is he doomed to be unlucky in love forever?