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 Move Under Ground

anchored on:horrorcosmic horrormid 20th centurydarkliterary & generalmadness+3 more

but

Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories 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 Haunting of Hill House
                  The Haunting of Hill House

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkeeriehorror+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 bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centuryeeriefirst personliterary & generalhorror+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 Hangsaman
                  Hangsaman

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1951

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkeeriefirst personliterary & general

                  Hangsaman is a 1951 gothic novel by American author Shirley Jackson. The second of Jackson's published novels, Hangsaman is a bildungsroman centering on lonely college freshman Natalie Waite, who descends into madness after enrolling in a liberal arts college.

                • Cover of Revival
                  Revival

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorrorcosmic horror+1 more

                  The protagonist details how his life keeps intersecting with that of the man he first met as the pastor of his church in childhood, whose experiments with electricity lead to mastery of a cosmic power which he uses to help people, until his obsession leads to physical and spiritual disaster for all.

                • Cover of Some of Your Blood
                  Some of Your Blood

                  Theodore Sturgeon · standalone novel · 1961

                  similar bymadnessmid 20th centurydarkeeriehorror+1 more

                  Some of Your Blood is a short horror novel in epistolary form by American writer Theodore Sturgeon, first published in 1961.

                • Cover of Dagon
                  Dagon

                  Fred Chappell · standalone novel · 1968

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkeeriehorrorcosmic horror

                  Dagon is a novel by author Fred Chappell published in 1968. The novel is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements, attempting to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic novel. It was awarded the Best Foreign Book of the Year prize by the French Academy in 1972.

                • Cover of The Sundial
                  The Sundial

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1958

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkliterary & general+2 more

                  The Sundial is a 1958 novel by American writer Shirley Jackson.

                • Cover of The Philosopher's Stone
                  The Philosopher's Stone

                  Colin Wilson · standalone novel · 1969

                  similar bymadnessmid 20th centurydarkeeriehorrorcosmic horror

                  The Philosopher's Stone is a 1969 horror novel by the English writer Colin Wilson. It tells the story of two researchers who find a way to reach a higher state of consciousness, which leads to frightening revelations about humanity's distant history. Like Wilson's 1967 novel The Mind Parasites, The Philosopher's Stone uses motifs from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

                • Cover of It Happened in Boston?
                  It Happened in Boston?

                  Russell H. Greenan · standalone novel · 1968

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkeeriefirst personliterary & general

                  It Happened in Boston? (1968) is a novel by Russell H. Greenan. It tells the story of an unreliable narrator, who is a disillusioned, paranoid painter, whose goal in life is to someday meet God and destroy him. He decided he wanted to hold God accountable for the evils in the world. The book follows a bizarre series of events in the lives of him and his painter friends and effectively documents his descent into paranoid delusions as he becomes more and more unreliable as a narrator leaving the reader to become more and more unsure about what exactly is happening in Boston.

                • Cover of The House on the Borderland
                  The House on the Borderland

                  William Hope Hodgson · standalone novel · 1908

                  similar bymadnessdarkeeriehorrorfirst person

                  The House on the Borderland (1908) is a supernatural horror novel by British fantasist William Hope Hodgson. The novel is a hallucinatory account of a recluse's stay at a remote house, and his experiences of supernatural creatures and otherworldly dimensions.

                • Cover of American Psycho
                  American Psycho

                  Bret Easton Ellis · standalone novel · 1991

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkhorrorfirst personliterary & general

                  American Psycho is a horror novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first-person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, and vain Manhattan investment banker who lives a double life as a serial killer. Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while "Some countries [deem it] so potentially controversial that it only to be sold as shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities".

                • Cover of Hell House
                  Hell House

                  Richard Matheson · standalone novel · 1971

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorror

                  A dying millionaire wants proof, once and for all, of what happens after death, and hires physicist-turned-parapsychologist Dr. Lionel Barrett to spend a week investigating the Belasco House in Maine -- a mansion so thoroughly associated with atrocity that it's known simply as Hell House, where every previous investigation has ended in death or madness. Barrett brings his wife Edith along with two mediums, the spiritualist Florence Tanner and Benjamin Franklin Fischer, survivor of an earlier disastrous visit, whose scientific skepticism and spiritualist convictions clash from the first night inside. Richard Matheson's haunted-house novel, later filmed as The Legend of Hell House.

                • Cover of The Girl Next Door
                  The Girl Next Door

                  Jack Ketchum · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centurydarkhorror

                  The Girl Next Door is a 1989 horror novel by American writer Jack Ketchum. It is loosely based on the 1965 murder of Sylvia Likens. In 2007, it was adapted into the film The Girl Next Door.

                • Cover of Bag of Bones
                  Bag of Bones

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkhorrorfirst person

                  Bag of Bones is a 1998 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife. It won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the 1999 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1999 Locus Award for Best Dark Fantasy/Horror Novel.

                • Cover of The Other
                  The Other

                  Thomas Tryon · standalone novel · 1971

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorror

                  On a rural New England farm in 1935, thirteen-year-old identical twins Niles and Holland Perry share an unnervingly close bond, finishing each other's thoughts the way twins in family lore are supposed to. But the boys are not alike underneath: one is gentle and well-liked, the other carries something cold and cruel that the adults around them keep failing to notice. As a string of unsettling accidents and small cruelties start happening around the family's property, the people who love the twins begin, too slowly, to wonder whether both of them are really still there to blame. Thomas Tryon's debut novel, a work of quiet, Gothic-inflected horror.

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

                  Paul Tremblay · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorrorfirst person

                  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 The Bird's Nest
                  The Bird's Nest

                  Shirley Jackson · standalone novel · 1954

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centuryeerieliterary & general

                  The Bird's Nest is a 1954 novel by Shirley Jackson. The plot concerns a young woman, Elizabeth Richmond, with multiple personality disorder.

                • Cover of Eye in the Sky
                  Eye in the Sky

                  Philip K. Dick · standalone novel · 1957

                  similar bymadnessnorth americamid 20th centuryeerie

                  Eight visitors touring a particle-accelerator facility are caught in a catastrophic malfunction, a collapsing platform, a burst of radiation, that leaves them all unconscious. When protagonist Jack Hamilton, an engineer recently fired over Red Scare-era suspicions about his wife's politics, comes to, the world around him is subtly, then not so subtly, wrong: physics bends to fit one fellow victim's religious convictions, then to another's paranoid fears, as the group cycles through what turn out to be shared hallucinations built from each other's private belief systems. Philip K. Dick's early novel about how differently people actually see the same world.

                • Cover of Burnt Offerings
                  Burnt Offerings

                  Robert Marasco · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorror

                  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 The Hunger
                  The Hunger

                  Alma Katsu · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorror

                  Fictionalized supernatural/horror treatment of the Donner Party.

                • Cover of Penguin Classics Lovecraft
                  Penguin Classics Lovecraft

                  series · 3 books · 1999

                  completed

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorrorcosmic horror

                • Cover of Lunar Park
                  Lunar Park

                  Bret Easton Ellis · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriefirst personhorrorliterary & general

                  Lunar Park is a metafictional novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, presented as a mock memoir. It was released by Knopf in 2005. It was the first book written by Ellis to use past tense narrative.

                • Cover of Robert Bloch's Psycho Universe
                  Robert Bloch's Psycho Universe

                  series · 5 books · 1959

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkhorror+1 more

                • Cover of Dead Lines
                  Dead Lines

                  Greg Bear · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar bymadnessnorth americadarkeeriehorror

                  From the flaps of the Ballantine first edition: "For the last two years, Peter Russell has mourned the death of one of his twin daughters - who was just ten when she was murdered. Recent news of his best friend's fatal heart attack has now come as another devastating blow. Divorced, despondent, and going nowhere in his career, Peter fears his life is circling the drain. Then Trans comes along. The brainchild of an upstart telecom company, Trans is (as its name suggests) a transcendent marvel, a sleek, handheld interpersonal communication device capable of flawless operation anywhere in the world, at any time. "A cell phone, but not" - transmitting with crystal clarity across a newly discovered, never-utilized bandwidth... and poised to spark a new-technology revolution. When its creators offer Peter a position on their team, it should be a golden opportunity for him. If only he wasn't seemingly going mad. Everywhere Peter turns, inexplicable apparitions are walking before him or reaching out in torment. After a chilling encounter with his own lost child he begins to grasp the terrifying truth: Trans is a Pandora's box that has tapped into a frequency not of this world... but of the next. And now, via this open channel to oblivion, the dead have gained access to the living. For Peter, and for humankind, a long shadowy night of the soul has descended, bringing with it the stuff of a horrifying nightmare from which they may never awaken."