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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 Possess

anchored on:horrordemonsour worldcontemporaryyoung adultparanormal+3 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 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 The Black Tattoo
                  The Black Tattoo

                  Sam Enthoven · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byour worldcontemporarydemonsdarktensecoming of ageyoung adultidentity+1 more

                  The Black Tattoo is a 2006 young adult fantasy novel by Sam Enthoven. It deals with a boy, Charlie, becoming possessed by a demon that manifests itself in the form of a black tattoo on his body.

                • Cover of Jerusalem's Lot
                  Jerusalem's Lot

                  series · 3 books · 1975

                  similar bycontemporaryhorrorour worlddarktense

                  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 Full Tilt
                  Full Tilt

                  Neal Shusterman · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byour worldcontemporarydarktensecoming of agehorroryoung adultfantasy

                  When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra.

                • Cover of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
                  The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

                  series · 2 books · 2009

                  similar byour worldcontemporarydarktenseparanormalcoming of ageyoung adultfantasy

                • Cover of Demonata
                  Demonata

                  series · 10 books · 2005

                  similar bydemonsdarktensehorrorcontemporaryyoung adult+3 more

                  The Demonata is a young adult horror/fantasy series by author Darren Shan.

                • Cover of In the Night Room
                  In the Night Room

                  Peter Straub · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktenseidentity+2 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 Rose Madder
                  Rose Madder

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktensefantasy

                  Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."

                • Cover of The Devouring
                  The Devouring

                  series · 3 books · 2008

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktenseyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of The Damnation Game
                  The Damnation Game

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1985

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktensefantasy

                  Marty Strauss is a compulsive gambler fresh out of prison when he's hired as bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a reclusive tycoon whose fortune and continued existence trace back to a bargain struck decades earlier, during World War II, with a man named Mamoulian. That bargain is coming due: Mamoulian, who commands powers reaching well past death, wants what he's owed, and Whitehead's household -- his wife, his daughter Carys, his previous bodyguard -- is caught in the middle of a decades-old debt finally being called in. Marty, out of his depth from the start, finds himself the only one willing to stand against Mamoulian. Clive Barker's first novel.

                • Cover of Cell
                  Cell

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktense

                  In Cell, King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind. Those without cell phones, like illustrator Clayton Riddell and his small band of "normies," must fight for survival, and their journey to find Clayton's estranged wife and young son rockets the book toward resolution.

                • Cover of Bite
                  Bite

                  Richard Laymon · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktenseparanormal

                  It's almost midnight. Cat's on the bed, facedown and naked. She's Sam's former girlfriend, the only woman he's ever loved. Sam's in the closet, with a hammer in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. Together they wait as the clock ticks down because ... the vampire is coming.When Cat first appeared at Sam's door he couldn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen her in ten years, but he'd never forgotten her. Not for a second. But before this night is through, Sam will enter a nightmare of blood and fear that he'll never be able to forget -- no matter how hard he tries.

                • Cover of The Frenzy
                  The Frenzy

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar byour worldcontemporarydarktensecoming of ageparanormalyoung adultidentity+1 more

                  Love is a werewolf, influenced by the moon and terror, and always about to change. Liv has a secret. Something happened to her when she was thirteen. Something that changed everything. Liv knows she doesn’t belong anymore—not in her own skin, not in her family . . . not anywhere. The only time she truly feels like herself is when she’s with her boyfriend, Corey, and in the woods that surround her town. But in the woods, a mysterious woman watches Liv. In the woods, a pack of wild boys lurks. In the woods, Liv learns about the curse that will haunt her forever. The curse that caused the frenzy four years ago. And that may cause it again, all too soon. While Corey and Liv’s love binds them together, Liv’s dark secret threatens to tear them apart as she struggles to understand who—or what—she really is. And by the light of the full moon, the most dangerous secrets bare their claws. . . .

                • Cover of The Dark
                  The Dark

                  James Herbert · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktense+1 more

                  WorldCat: It came like a malignant shadow with seductive promises of power. And somewhere in the night, a small girl smiled as her mother burned. Asylum inmates slaughtered their attendants. In slimy tunnels, once-human creatures gathered. Madness raged as the lights began to fade and humanity was attacked by an ancient, unstoppable evil.

                • Cover of Carrie
                  Carrie

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bycontemporaryhorrortensedarkcoming of age

                  In one way or another, everybody abused Carrie. This sixteen-year-old misfit was forbidden everything that was young and fun by her fanatical mother. She was teased and taunted by her classmates, misunderstood by her teachers, and given up as hopeless by almost everyone. But Carrie had a secret: She possessed terrifying telekinetic powers that could make inanimate objects move, a lighted candle fall, or a door lock. Carrie could make all kinds of startling bizarre, and malevolent things happen. (WorldCat)

                • Cover of Pandaemonium
                  Pandaemonium

                  Christopher Brookmyre · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktensedemons+1 more

                  A group of teenagers on retreat encounter what appear to be forces of hell accidentally unleashed by a secret military experiment gone wrong.

                • Cover of The Fog
                  The Fog

                  James Herbert · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktense

                  The Fog is a horror novel by English writer James Herbert, published in 1975. It is about a deadly fog that drives its victims insane when they come into contact with it.

                • Cover of Raised by Wolves
                  Raised by Wolves

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar byour worldcontemporarytenseparanormalcoming of ageyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Camp Firwood
                  Camp Firwood

                  Boris Bacic · standalone novel · 2020

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktensecoming of ageyoung adult

                  ● "If the counselors of Camp Firwood send you into the woods, you're as good as dead. When the rebellious teenager Kevin gets sent to a summer camp by his parents, he initially has no idea what's in store for him. Every two weeks, the camp organizes an event called The Trial. The campers all dread it. They don't want to spend the night in the woods with the Firwood Wraith roaming around. And the more they misbehave, the higher the chances they'll be chosen. By the time Kevin realizes what Camp Firwood really is, he is trapped—and every week, more and more campers go missing." ― quoted from this book's Amazon product page as of 2022-07-26.

                • Cover of The Shining
                  The Shining

                  series · 5 books · 1977

                  similar bycontemporaryhorrordarktense+1 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 Thirsty
                  Thirsty

                  M. T. Anderson · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar bycontemporaryhorrordarkcoming of ageparanormalyoung adultidentity+1 more

                  Thirsty is a 1997 horror novel written by M. T. Anderson. It is set in modern Clayton, Massachusetts. The main character, Christopher, just wants a normal life; to date his crush Rebecca Schwartz, stay up late, and other teenager things. Unfortunately, Chris has much more to worry about than puberty — he also has to deal with his vampirism.

                • Cover of Monster
                  Monster

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktenseyoung adult

                  She said she killed them because they were monsters. Mary Blanc walked into the party with a loaded shotgun. In the blink of an eye she blew two people away. She wanted to kill more, but was stopped by her best friend, Angela Warner, and the police. The next day, when Angela visits Mary at the jail, she asks why she did it. Mary responds, "Because they were no longer human." Angela thinks she's crazy. At first. Until she probes deeper into Mary's claims and discovers a horror so unimaginable that she thinks she is going crazy. She even gets to the point where she wonders if she should have let Mary keep on killing. While there was still time to stop the thing from spreading. The very old thing. The hungry thing.

                • Cover of Rosemary Reilly
                  Rosemary Reilly

                  series · 2 books · 1967

                  completed

                  similar byhorrortensedemons+4 more

                  Rosemary's Baby follows a young wife in a Gothic Manhattan apartment building who grows increasingly convinced that her elderly neighbors, and even her own husband, are part of a conspiracy surrounding her pregnancy. Ira Levin returned to the character thirty years later in the 1997 sequel Son of Rosemary. Together the two novels form a short, self-contained horror series about faith, control, and motherhood.

                • Cover of The Night Church
                  The Night Church

                  Whitley Strieber · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrordarktensedemons

                  1983 Simon & Schuster hardcover, BCE, no ISBN. Whitley Strieber (The Wild). Horror tale features a pair of young lovers who gradually discover they are integral parts of a centuries-old Satanist conspiracy to rule the world.

                • Cover of The Cold One
                  The Cold One

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byour worldcontemporarydemonshorrordarktense

                  Existing only to destroy humankind, a demonic force, disguised as a beautiful woman, ravages the lives of several people, including former street gang member Jerry Washington and journalist Peter James.