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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 McFall

anchored on:horrorcontemporary

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 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 mental unraveling — descent into madness, delusion, and minds at war with themselves.
  • 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
                  The Shining

                  series · 5 books · 1977

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarknorth america+3 more

                  Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining follows the Torrance family as winter caretakers of the isolated, malevolent Overlook Hotel, where father Jack is gradually consumed by the hotel's influence while his young son Danny's psychic "shining" draws its attention. Doctor Sleep (2013) picks up the story decades later, following Danny as an adult still marked by that childhood ordeal. Together the two form a horror duology spanning nearly forty years of real-world publication.

                • Cover of Pet Sematary
                  Pet Sematary

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town+1 more

                  Pet Sematary is a 1983 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of a family moving to Maine and settling closer to a pet cemetery in the woods, which is home to a terrifying force that brings death and sorrow. The novel was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984, and adapted into two films: one in 1989 and another in 2019 as well as several spinoffs.

                • Cover of Harvest Home
                  Harvest Home

                  Thomas Tryon · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town

                  What is the dark secret the people (especially the women!) of Harvest Home are hiding? A family tries to get out of the City and finds the perfect home for their young daughter complete with folk remedies for her allergies and sensitivities in the local wisewoman. But is there something sinister under the surface of the charming little town?

                • Cover of If You Could See Me Now
                  If You Could See Me Now

                  Peter Straub · standalone novel · 1976

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americagothic+1 more

                  If You Could See Me Now is a horror novel by American author Peter Straub. It is his third novel and his second work of gothic or supernatural fiction. The book was published by Jonathan Cape in June 1977 – the same London publisher who published Julia in 1976. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan published an American edition also in June 1977.

                • Cover of The Mayfair Witches Saga
                  The Mayfair Witches Saga

                  series · 3 books · 1990

                  completed

                  similar byfamily secretscontemporaryhorrordarkeerienorth americagothic

                  Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a trilogy of Gothic supernatural horror fantasy novels by American author Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

                • Cover of Comes the Blind Fury
                  Comes the Blind Fury

                  John Saul · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byhorrorcontemporaryeerienorth americasmall town+2 more

                  WorldCat: When Michelle comes to visit on Paradise Point, she sees the hand of a blind girl who died a century ago, reaching out to her from the swirling mists.

                • Cover of The Haunting of Hill House
                  The Haunting of Hill House

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar byhorrordarkeerienorth americagothic+1 more

                  The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been made into two feature films, a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series.

                • Cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle
                  We Have Always Lived in the Castle

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1962

                  similar byfamily secretseeriehorrornorth americasmall towngothic+1 more

                  A young woman lives with her older sister and sickly uncle in their old family house, after a mysterious tragedy turns the townsfolk against them.

                • Cover of Supernatural Minnesota
                  Supernatural Minnesota

                  series · 4 books · 1984

                  completed

                  similar byhorrordarkeeriecontemporarynorth america+1 more

                • Cover of Burnt Offerings
                  Burnt Offerings

                  Robert Marasco · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americagothic+1 more

                  Burnt Offerings is a 1973 American horror novel by Robert Marasco. Its plot follows a family who move into a summer home where each member is plagued by unusual experiences and personality changes. Published by Delacorte Press, the novel had originally been conceived as a screenplay before Marasco rewrote it into a novel. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1976. The novel was reprinted in 2015 by Valancourt Press.

                • Cover of A Head Full of Ghosts
                  A Head Full of Ghosts

                  Paul Tremblay · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth america+1 more

                  A Head Full of Ghosts is a 2015 horror novel by American writer Paul Tremblay. The plot involves a Massachusetts family under financial and emotional strain while their fourteen-year-old daughter, Marjorie Barrett, exhibits signs of severe mental illness. The Barretts come to believe she is possessed by a demon, and her behavior is publicized when the family stars in a reality TV show. Marjorie's younger sister, Merry Barrett, relays the experiences of her childhood fifteen years later. Themes include elements of Catholic exorcism and reality television exploitation.

                • Cover of Snowblind
                  Snowblind

                  Christopher Golden · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byhorrorcontemporaryeerienorth americasmall town+2 more

                  "SNOWBLIND is a thrilling contemporary ghost story with both horror and heart. The small New England town of Coventry is haunted by its memories of a deadly winter... in which loved ones were lost, families torn apart, and a town buried in a terrible blizzard. Now, twelve years later, the people plagued by their memories of that storm are haunted once again as a new storm approaches, promising to wreak new havoc. Old ghosts trickle back, and this storm will prove even more terrifying and deadly than the last. With richly textured characters, scarred and haunted by the ghosts of those they loved most, Snowblind reinvents the ghost story for today's world. Spellbinding in scope and rooted deeply in classic storytelling, Christopher Golden has written a chilling masterpiece that is the best work of his career and a standout supernatural thriller"--

                • Cover of Ghost Story
                  Ghost Story

                  Peter Straub · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byfamily secretshorrordarkeerienorth americasmall town

                  Four prominent citizens of a small town in upstate New York who share guilt over something that happened in their youth are revisited late in life by a destructive evil force which uses their guilt as an opportunity to destroy them as well as the entire town.

                • Cover of Jerusalem's Lot
                  Jerusalem's Lot

                  series · 3 books · 1975

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town+1 more

                  Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.

                • Cover of The Book of Accidents
                  The Book of Accidents

                  Chuck Wendig · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town

                  Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic. This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.

                • Cover of Graveminder
                  Graveminder

                  series · 6 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporary+6 more

                  Graveminder is Melissa Marr's 2011 gothic mystery about Rebekkah Barrow, who returns to her hometown of Claysville for her grandmother's funeral and learns she has inherited her grandmother's role as Graveminder, a guardian whose ritual keeps the town's dead properly at rest. When the ritual isn't performed correctly, the dead rise, drawing Rebekkah into a web of secrets alongside Byron Montgomery, the town's Undertaker and her old love interest. It won the 2011 Goodreads Choice Award for horror; Marr later returned to the same small-town premise with Bullets for the Dead and Cursed by Death.

                • Cover of Coraline
                  Coraline

                  series · 2 books · 2002

                  similar bycontemporaryhorroreerienorth americagothic+1 more

                • Cover of The Between
                  The Between

                  Tananarive Due · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth america+1 more

                  The Between is a 1995 horror novel by Tananarive Due and her debut novel. It follows a middle-class African-American husband and father who has lived with the belief that he cheated death as a child. When his family becomes the target of racist threats, he suffers a psychological breakdown intertwined with supernatural elements that blur the boundary between reality and death. It was nominated for the 1996 Bram Stoker Award.

                • Cover of Harrow Academy
                  Harrow Academy

                  series · 4 books · 1999

                  similar byhorrorcontemporary+5 more

                • Cover of Black River Orchard
                  Black River Orchard

                  Chuck Wendig · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town

                  It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker. This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples... and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful? Even if something else is buried in the orchard besides the seeds of these extraordinary trees: a bloody history whose roots reach back to the very origins of the town. But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. It’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.

                • Cover of Darkness
                  Darkness

                  John Saul · standalone novel · 1991

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americasmall town

                  Darkness is a horror novel by John Saul published in 1991. Set in the fictional hamlet of Villejeune, Florida, a town shrouded by a dark, evil force. On the edge of an eerie swamp, the townsfolk act out gruesome rituals to appease the dark spirit that lies within the watery fortress enveloping the village. The Andersons return to the town, and soon realize they must confront this evil head on.

                • Cover of A Cold Season
                  A Cold Season

                  series · 2 books · 2011

                  similar byhorrorcontemporarydarkeeriesmall town+1 more

                • Cover of Her Fearful Symmetry
                  Her Fearful Symmetry

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporaryeeriegothic+1 more

                  Her Fearful Symmetry is a horror novel by the American writer Audrey Niffenegger. The book was published on October 1, 2009 and is set in and around London's Highgate Cemetery where, after a year of research for the book, Niffenegger acted as a tour guide.

                • Cover of The Place Where They Buried Your Heart
                  The Place Where They Buried Your Heart

                  Christina Henry · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar byfamily secretshorrorcontemporarydarkeerienorth americagothic

                  On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside. Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable. The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.