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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 Preternatural

anchored on:science fictionour worldcontemporaryweird fictionalienspsychic powers+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 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 Southern Reach Trilogy
                  Southern Reach Trilogy

                  series · 4 books · 2014

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                  The Southern Reach Series is a series of novels by the American author Jeff VanderMeer first published in 2014—Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution. The series takes its name from the secret agency that is central to the plot. In 2013, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights for the series, and a film adaptation of Annihilation was made with Alex Garland as writer-director. The film was released in 2018. The most recent book in the series, Absolution, was released on 22 October 2024.

                • Cover of Preternatural
                  Preternatural

                  series · 3 books · 1996

                  completed

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                • Cover of The Lathe of Heaven
                  The Lathe of Heaven

                  Ursula K. Le Guin · standalone novel · 1971

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                  The Lathe of Heaven is a 1971 science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. It won the 1972 Locus Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the 1971 Nebula Award for Best Novel and 1972 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Two television film adaptations were released: the PBS production, The Lathe of Heaven (1980), and Lathe of Heaven (2002), a remake produced by the A&E Network.

                • Cover of Time Out of Joint
                  Time Out of Joint

                  Philip K. Dick · standalone novel · 1959

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                  Time Out of Joint is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. An abridged version was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960.

                • Cover of The Infinite Cage
                  The Infinite Cage

                  Keith Laumer · standalone novel · 1972

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                  Synopsis from back cover: A little wisp of a man appears from who-knows-where, apparently suffering from delusions, schizophrenia, paranoia, and mental maladies not yet named. His misadventures in a hostile world would put Walter Mitty to shame for lack of imagination. He finds he has strange powers that bring him spectacular success at whatever he attempts--followed, it seems inevitably, by crushing disaster. At last, on the verge of utter despair, he stumbles onto a clue to the secret of his existence... Keith Laumer, famous for his witty novels of galaxy-hopping adventure, has created a spooky, funny, hauntingly brilliant novel that cannot be put down--and will never be forgotten-- Welcome To Adam's World

                • Cover of Legion / Stephen Leeds
                  Legion / Stephen Leeds

                  series · 5 books · 2012

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                  Legion, or the Stephen Leeds series, is a series of science fiction novellas created by American author Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson authored the first three stories : Legion, first published on August 31, 2012, Legion: Skin Deep in November 2014, and Legion: Lies of the Beholder in September 2018. Death and Faxes, co-authored by Max Epstein, David Pace, and Michael Harkins, was released in June 2022. The books have received favorable reviews.

                • Cover of Pstalemate
                  Pstalemate

                  Lester del Rey · standalone novel · 1971

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                  From the back cover of the Berkley Medallion paperback: A young man finds he has extrasensory talents. Then he discovers that others have them, too - though few as powerful as his. And then comes an appalling discovery: he finds that if he cannot master these PSI powers he will certainly go mad. And no one has ever mastered them. His desperate battle to find the secret of the power leads him to a source utterly alien - and awesome in its implications for Earth's fate....

                • Cover of The Hollow Man
                  The Hollow Man

                  Dan Simmons · standalone novel · 1992

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                  The Hollow Man is a novel by American author Dan Simmons. The book was initially published by Bantam Books on September 1, 1992. It narrates the story of a university lecturer who has the ability to "hear" the thoughts of others, an ability he shares with his dying wife.

                • Cover of The Grin of the Dark
                  The Grin of the Dark

                  series · 2 books · 2007

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                • Cover of Chocky
                  Chocky

                  series · 2 books · 1968

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                  Chocky (1968) is John Wyndham's science fiction novel about an eleven-year-old boy, Matthew, whose parents grow alarmed by his conversations with an unseen presence that feeds him unsettling insights into mathematics and human progress, building toward the reveal of what, or who, Chocky really is. Mark Daniel's Chocky's Challenge (1986), published after Wyndham's death, is an authorized continuation that carries the story forward.

                • Cover of Under the Skin
                  Under the Skin

                  Michel Faber · standalone novel · 2000

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                  Under the Skin is a 2000 science fiction novel by Michel Faber. Set on the coast in north-central Scotland, it traces an alien who, assuming human form, drives around the countryside picking up male hitchhikers whom she drugs and delivers to her home planet. The novel, which was Faber's debut, was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Award. It was later loosely adapted into a 2013 film of the same name directed by Jonathan Glazer.

                • Cover of Childhood's End
                  Childhood's End

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1953

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                  Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows a peaceful alien invasion of Earth by mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

                • Cover of Dead Lines
                  Dead Lines

                  Greg Bear · standalone novel · 2004

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                  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."

                • Cover of The Deadly Sky
                  The Deadly Sky

                  Doris Piserchia · standalone novel · 1983

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                  From the back cover of the DAW first edition: "I stared up at two tall spires. Between them was a dark area with a crack of utter blackness running down the center, not yet open but plainly threatening. The portion around the crack didn't look like normal sky but was wrinkled and bumpy as if something was striking it in an attempt to get through to my side. Being there looking at the darkness had a strange effect on my mind. I felt as if something sinister was reaching out of the crack to prowl inside my head. It wasn't a piece of ordinary sky stretched up there between the mountain peaks but a fabric of space that threatened to tear open. Something behind it tried to get in, and though it hadn't succeeded, it had forced a small bit of black light into my world."

                • Cover of Sinister Barrier
                  Sinister Barrier

                  Eric Frank Russell · standalone novel · 1939

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                  Sinister Barrier is an English-language science fiction novel by British writer Eric Frank Russell. The novel originally appeared in the magazine Unknown in 1939, the first novel to appear in its pages. It was first published in book form in 1943 by The World's Work, Ltd. Russell revised and expanded the book for its first US publication by Fantasy Press in 1948. Most subsequent editions were based on the Fantasy Press version.

                • Cover of Twilight Zone Collections
                  Twilight Zone Collections

                  series · 8 books · 1960

                  part of Twilight Zone

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                • Cover of The Visitors
                  The Visitors

                  Clifford D. Simak · standalone novel · 1980

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                  WorldCat: Intelligent, alien creatures arrive on Earth from outer space, threatening world stability and presaging the destruction of civilization.

                • Cover of Ascension
                  Ascension

                  Nicholas Binge · standalone novel · 2023

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                  Ascension is a 2023 novel by Nicholas Binge, published in the UK by Harper Voyager, and in the US by Riverhead Books. It is published or forthcoming in twelve languages, and a film adaptation is in development. The novel tells the story of Harold Tunmore, a physicist, who joins a team to climb a mountain that has appeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

                • Cover of Fear
                  Fear

                  L. Ron Hubbard · standalone novel · 1951

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                  Fear is a psychological thriller-horror novella by American writer L. Ron Hubbard, which first appeared in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction in July 1940.

                • Cover of The Raw Shark Texts
                  The Raw Shark Texts

                  Steven Hall · standalone novel · 2007

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                  The Raw Shark Texts is the debut novel by British author Steven Hall, released in 2007. The book was released by Canongate Books in the US and the UK and published by HarperCollins in Canada. The title is a play on "Rorschach Tests", which are inkblot tests. The novel is a work of Meta-fiction which uses Concrete poetry, linguistic jokes and cultural references. It is the story of an amnesiac re-discovering his past life through a surreal collection of clues he has left himself while evading a steampunk villain and the shark of the title.

                • Cover of The Great Victorian Collection
                  The Great Victorian Collection

                  Brian Moore · standalone novel · 1975

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                  The Great Victorian Collection, published in 1975, is a fantasy novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore.It tells the story of a man who dreams that the empty parking lot he can see from his hotel window has been transformed by the arrival of a collection of priceless Victoriana on display in a vast open-air market. When he awakes he finds that he can no longer distinguish the dream from reality.

                • Cover of The Purple Cloud
                  The Purple Cloud

                  M. P. Shiel · standalone novel · 1901

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                  Around 1900, the author receives a packet of writings of a psychic, who recounts her vision of the multi-decade diary of an arctic explorer of the future, the first to reach the north pole; but during his multiyear trek, an unknown eruption temporarily poisons the atmosphere with cyanide, killing all human and animal life, sparing only the arctic latitudes and leaving him the last man on earth.

                • Cover of By Furies Possessed
                  By Furies Possessed

                  Ted White · standalone novel · 1970

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                  From the back cover of the Signet first edition: "His glowing eyes, light streaming from them, paralyzed me! I was transfixed and while fear climbed into my throat and choked off my breath, he smiled. It was a terrible, knowing smile, inhuman - alien! A shriek of terror died within me as he reached up with an enormous hand and removed it from his gaping mouth. As I cringed helplessly beneath him, the towering figure held the offering before me - the Communion offering of the mysterious Church of the Brotherhood - a pulsing, amorphous object of translucent white jelly. I trembled and gagged. It was alive! As I stared in horror, it transformed itself into a mouth - and smiled!"

                • Cover of The Nightmare People
                  The Nightmare People

                  Lawrence Watt-Evans · standalone novel · 1990

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                  One night Ed Smith thought he was having a waking nightmare when he saw a monstrous face at his window, but in the morning his neighbors were missing. The people who later turned up were not quite right, and gradually Smith realized they not only weren't his neighbors, but weren't even human--they were the creatures he had seen ? Watt-Evans has created a terrifying new monster in the classic tradition of Frankenstein and Dracula!