Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

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 Missing

anchored on:our worldcontemporaryyoung adult

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 Dark Matter
                  Dark Matter

                  Blake Crouch · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldnorth america

                  Jason Dessen, college physics professor, husband and father, is kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe where his counterpart had dedicated his life to inventing a method of traveling between an infinity of parallel universes.

                • Cover of In the Night Room
                  In the Night Room

                  Peter Straub · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldnorth america+1 more

                  In the Night Room is a 2004 horror-thriller novel by American author Peter Straub, a sequel to his 2003 book Lost Boy, Lost Girl. The work was first published in hardback on October 26, 2004, through Random House and it won the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Novel. Straub encountered some difficulties while writing In the Night Room and had written several different passages for the work before growing bored with each version before writing it using the same technique he used for its predecessor in which he "reached down inside the book and turned it inside out."

                • Cover of Departure
                  Departure

                  A. G. Riddle · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour world+1 more

                  "The world's past and future rests in the hands of five unwitting strangers in this definitive edition of A. G. Riddle's time-traveling, mind-bending speculative thriller. En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they've crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home? Five passengers seem to hold clues about what's really going on: writer Harper Lane, venture capitalist Nick Stone, German genetic researcher Sabrina Schroeder, computer scientist Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, the son of a billionaire philanthropist.As more facts about the crash emerge, it becomes clear that some in this group know more than they're letting on--answers that will lead Harper and Nick to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy involving their own lives. As they begin to piece together the truth, they discover they have the power to change the future and the past--to save our world. or end it. A wildly inventive and propulsive adventure full of hairpin twists, Departure is a thrilling tale that weaves together power, ambition, fate, memory, and love, from a bold and visionary talent"--

                • Cover of Dissolution
                  Dissolution

                  Nicholas Binge · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar bythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour world+1 more

                  Dissolution is a 2025 science fiction novel by Nicholas Binge, published in the UK by Harper Voyager, and in the US by Riverhead Books. It is published or forthcoming in multiple languages, including Spanish, German, Hungarian, and Arabic. The novel tells the story of Margaret (Maggie) Webb, who discovers that her husband Stanley’s Alzheimer’s is a false cover for the fact that his memories are being purposefully erased to keep something he did in his past hidden. The book alternates between Maggie and Stanley’s perspectives as they move through multiple decades of their relationship.

                • Cover of The 22 Murders of Madison May
                  The 22 Murders of Madison May

                  Max Barry · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bythriller & suspensecontemporaryour world+1 more

                • Cover of Recursion
                  Recursion

                  Blake Crouch · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldnorth america

                  Recursion is a thriller science fiction novel by American writer Blake Crouch, first published in the United States in June 2019 by the Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The novel explores themes of memory, identity, and time.

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

                  Jon Courtenay Grimwood · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour world

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

                • Cover of Feedback
                  Feedback

                  D. L. Richardson · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult

                  ● "Three teenagers have one thing in common: they're kidnapped two weeks after receiving life-saving organ transplants. Their abductor is a man who believes the memories of the host are retained in the organs. Extracting these memories is just the beginning. Something else is awakening inside their minds. If they trust this voice they might save the world. But it might also get them killed." ― paraphrased from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2024-04-03.

                • Cover of Jumper
                  Jumper

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  similar bytensecontemporary+4 more

                  Jumper follows David Rice, a teenager who discovers he can teleport anywhere he's been and uses the power to escape an abusive home, only to find that ability alone doesn't solve the harder problems of finding his absent mother, building an honest relationship, or staying off the radar of people who'd exploit him. Steven Gould's series continues across Reflex, Impulse, and Exo, later following his and his wife's daughter as a second-generation jumper. A 2008 film loosely adapted the first novel.

                • Cover of Airhead
                  Airhead

                  series · 3 books · 2008

                  similar byidentitycontemporaryyoung adultnorth america+2 more

                • Cover of Frozen Fire
                  Frozen Fire

                  Tim Bowler · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour world

                  Frozen Fire is a philosophical thriller about the nature of reality by Tim Bowler. The novel was first published in 2006. It introduces a mysterious boy who wants to escape his unhappy life through suicide, and a fifteen-year-old girl who only wants her brother back from wherever he has disappeared to. Frozen Fire has won several awards.

                • Cover of Apocalypse
                  Apocalypse

                  Tim Bowler · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult

                  Apocalypse is a young adult novel written by British author Tim Bowler. It was originally released in 2004 in the UK. The book deals with teenage Kit trying to find his parents after a storm blows them onto an island in which the local community is hostile and a mysterious man who resembles him in every detail in a series of events that turn his world upside down.

                • Cover of John Cleaver
                  John Cleaver

                  series · 8 books · 2009

                  similar bytensecontemporaryyoung adultnorth america+2 more

                • Cover of Locked in Time
                  Locked in Time

                  Lois Duncan · standalone novel · 1985

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryyoung adultnorth america

                  Locked in Time is a 1985 suspense novel by Lois Duncan. The story centers around Nore, a seventeen-year-old girl who moves into a new home with her father and her new stepfamily. Soon after she meets her stepmother, stepbrother, and stepsister for the first time, Nore begins to suspect something is not quite right about her stepfamily. The author states that the novel explores some of the issues surrounding having eternal life. Duncan says she developed the idea for the novel when one of her daughters was thirteen years old and was having issues with her body image. Duncan mentions that her daughter was "taking everything out" on her, and she began to wonder what it would be like if her daughter never outgrew her adolescence.

                • Cover of Before I Go to Sleep
                  Before I Go to Sleep

                  S. J. Watson · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporary

                  Before I Go to Sleep is the first novel by S. J. Watson, published in the spring of 2011. It became both a Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 40 languages. It has become a bestseller in France, Canada, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. It reached number 7 on the U.S. bestseller list, the highest position for a debut novel by a British author since J. K. Rowling. The New York Times described the author as an "out-of-nowhere literary sensation". He wrote the novel between shifts whilst working as a National Health Service (NHS) audiologist.

                • Cover of The Last Universe
                  The Last Universe

                  William Sleator · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult

                  Sleator is at his sci-fi best with this quantum thriller, now available in paperbackIn this gothic, sci-fi thriller from a master storyteller, Susan and her wheelchair-bound brother, Gary, discover a mysterious maze in the vast gardens of their isolated home. Planted by a scientist uncle who disappeared long ago, the maze offers seemingly endless routes and choices. The teenagers discover that each turn they take alters their world in some way. Sickly Gary sees a chance to change his fate; Susan sees that they may both be lost forever.

                • Cover of The Gardener
                  The Gardener

                  S. A. Bodeen · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult+1 more

                  When high school sophomore Mason finds a beautiful but catatonic girl in the nursing home where his mother works, the discovery leads him to revelations about a series of disturbing human experiments that have a connection to his own life.

                • Cover of The Welcoming
                  The Welcoming

                  Nora Roberts · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar bytensecontemporaryour worldnorth america+2 more

                  Roman DeWinter came to the charming seaside inn with only the clothes on his back and a loaded .38 revolver. His orders: expose a criminal organization based at a quaint vacation hideaway, and all the evidence pointed to the innkeeper, Charity Ford. It was just another assignment for him. Routing, simple, uncomplicated. But he had never known the warmth of a home until he found his way to Charity. He didn't expect he would learn to care for his key suspect, and want something more with her. Charity knew Roman was different. His gaze smoldered with angry passion, arousing a dangerous fascination. His mere presence made her most forbidden desires come alive. Still, Charity knew so little about him, and it put her on edge. Was this stranger a threat to her happiness, or the man she'd been waiting a lifetime to welcome? They both have fallen in love. Has Roman made a mistake by not telling Charity the truth?

                • Cover of Nobody
                  Nobody

                  Jennifer Lynn Barnes · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adultnorth america

                  Fifteen-year-old Claire Ryan has always felt invisible, always lived beyond people's notice, which causes trouble when she instantly connects with seventeen-year-old Nix, who really can become invisible and has been sent to assassinate her.

                • Cover of Evil Genius (Catherine Jinks)
                  Evil Genius (Catherine Jinks)

                  series · 3 books · 2005

                  similar bytensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Conjured
                  Conjured

                  Sarah Beth Durst · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adult

                  Haunted by disturbing dreams and terrifying visions, a teenaged girl in a paranormal witness protection program must remember her past and why she has strange abilities before a magic-wielding serial killer hunts her down. Haunted by disturbing dreams and visions, a teenage girl in a paranormal witness protection program must remember her past and why she has strange abilities before a magic-wielding serial killer hunts her down. The plot contains graphic violence.

                • Cover of Cas Russell / Russell's Attic
                  Cas Russell / Russell's Attic

                  series · 5 books · 2014

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetenseour world+2 more

                • Cover of Remember
                  Remember

                  Eileen Cook · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporaryour worldyoung adultnorth america

                  Harper, whose father's company trademarked the "Memtex" procedure for wiping out bad memories, is surprised when her father objects to her having a treatment but afterwards, she begins having strange flashes about her own life and she joins forces with Neil, one of the company's protesters, to find the truth.

                • Cover of The Mask
                  The Mask

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1981

                  similar byidentitythriller & suspensetensecontemporarynorth america

                  The Mask is a thriller novel by American writer Dean Koontz originally released under the pseudonym Owen West in 1981. Koontz later re-released the novel under his own name.