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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 Scorpia

anchored on:thriller & suspensespy thrillercontemporarytenseyoung adultrevenge+4 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 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 Alex Rider
                  Alex Rider

                  series · 13 books · 2001

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspensespy thrilleradventurousyoung adult

                  Alex Rider is a series of spy novels by the English author Anthony Horowitz. The novels revolve around the teenaged spy Alex Rider and are primarily aimed towards young adults. The series comprises 14 novels, as well as seven graphic novels, seven short stories, and a supplementary book.

                • Cover of Marc Dane
                  Marc Dane

                  series · 1 book · 2018

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                • Cover of Pretty Little Devils
                  Pretty Little Devils

                  Nancy Holder · standalone novel · 2006

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                  Hazel Stone wants nothing more than to be a part of the hottest clique in school, the Pretty Little Devils, but she's stuck at a lunch table full of high school C-listers. Hazel has resigned herself to life as a nobody—when suddenly everything changes. The PLDs invite Hazel to one of the group's famous parties, held at the site of one of their babysitting jobs. Before Hazel knows it, she's in with the in crowd—and she couldn't be more thrilled!But nothing turns out the way she expects. Especially when one her classmates becomes jealous of her newfound status—deadly jealous.Author Nancy Holder weaves a wicked tale about the price of popularity, and having the kind of friends some girls would just die for.

                • Cover of The Book of Blood and Shadow
                  The Book of Blood and Shadow

                  Robin Wasserman · standalone novel · 2012

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                  It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and a boyfriend she adored. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands. Chris was dead. Adriane couldn't speak. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also-according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone-a murderer. Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora's determined to follow the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. But Chris's murder is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

                • Cover of Nicholas Linnear
                  Nicholas Linnear

                  series · 2 books · 1994

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenserevengeorganized crime+1 more

                • Cover of The Cure
                  The Cure

                  Douglas E. Richards · standalone novel · 2013

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                  A young woman, Erin Palmer, witnesses a psychopath murder her parents and sister. The bloody trauma propels her into a scientific career. She is studying the microbiology of the psychopathic brain, and is on a quest to discover the DNA which engenders the cerebral disease. Teaming up with a powerful but eccentric billionaire, she at last isolates the deadly DNA and is on the verge of finding a cure. But things and people are not what they seem. Both the young man she thinks she loves and the tycoon who has befriended her have a sinister side she did not understand. Erin is ensnared in a global conspiracy which may culminate in humanity's utter destruction.

                • Cover of The Rick Keller Project
                  The Rick Keller Project

                  series · 2 books · 2014

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                • Cover of The Joshua Files
                  The Joshua Files

                  series · 6 books · 2008

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                  The Joshua Files is a thriller book series aimed at pre-teens/teenagers written by British author M. G. Harris. The mythology of the series includes a fictional prophecy of the ancient Maya of a catastrophic event that will occur in December 2012.

                • Cover of Shane Schofield
                  Shane Schofield

                  series · 5 books · 1998

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenseadventurous

                  Shane 'Scarecrow' Schofield is a US Marine captain who leads his unit through single-location, high-body-count action thrillers set in an Antarctic ice station, a disputed Pacific island, and a maximum-security prison built into a mountain, among others. Matthew Reilly's series opens with Ice Station (1998) and keeps escalating its set-pieces across Area 7, Scarecrow, Hell Island, and Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves. It's fast, gleefully over-the-top military action rather than realistic technothriller territory.

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

                  S. J. Watson · standalone novel · 2011

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                  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 Robert Langdon
                  Robert Langdon

                  series · 6 books · 2000

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                  The Robert Langdon novel series is named after Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the novels by American author Dan Brown. Langdon is portrayed as a Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology, a fictional field related to the study of historic symbols, which is not methodologically connected to the actual discipline of semiotics. Brown's novels that feature the lead character also include historical themes and Christianity as motifs, and as a result have generated controversy. Brown states on his website that his novels are not anti-Christian, and that he is on a "constant spiritual journey" himself.

                • Cover of Night of the Blackbird
                  Night of the Blackbird

                  Heather Graham · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenserevenge+1 more

                  Moira Kelly has come home to Boston to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with family and friends. The last thing she expects to find in the family pub is the undercurrent of danger as talk turns to politics. All too quickly, Moira finds herself struggling with the anger of her old flame, Dan O'Hara, and the convictions of her new love, Michael McLean. Torn between them, she becomes a pawn in a conspiracy that promises to bring the violence and hatred of a different time and place to her own backyard.This passionate, close-knit community is harboring a traitor. And as the chilling acts of evil unfold around her, Moira must face the fact that a generation is not long enough to soften revenge.

                • Cover of Snake Eye
                  Snake Eye

                  William C. Dietz · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenseorganized crime+1 more

                  FBI Special Agent Christina Rossi had it all—for a while: a loving family, a career on an upward track, the works. Then a takedown of some eco-terrorists turned unexpectedly bloody, questions are being asked and the fast track is nothing but a memory as she doggedly pursues a slave labor case that might involve a Chinese mob and might be a complete bust. The family went away during an ugly divorce and her ex-husband's high-end life with a beautiful, upscale new wife has lured her daughter into a risky social circle and turned her against her mother.Things are almost too good to be true when a new man in her life, Jack Dexter, handsome, smart and very well-off, brings about a startlingly wonderful romance and a change in her day-to-day circumstances and even connects her to some information on the seemingly dead-end case she won't give up.Too good to be true turns out to be what's going on when a pervert's murder starts to unfold Dexter's dark secrets, her case begins turning into an uncontrollable monster and her daughter's life hangs in the balance.

                • Cover of Thomas Lourds
                  Thomas Lourds

                  series · 3 books · 2009

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                • Cover of The Fear Index
                  The Fear Index

                  Robert Harris · standalone novel · 2011

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                  A computer designed for stock trading becomes sentient.

                • Cover of Daughter of Deep Silence
                  Daughter of Deep Silence

                  Carrie Ryan · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenserevengeyoung adult+1 more

                  At fourteen, Frances survived a slaughter that claimed the lives of her parents and best friend, Libby, but she took on Libby's identity and wealth while plotting revenge against the powerful Wells family and now, at age eighteen, is ready to destroy them, including her first love, Grey.

                • Cover of The NUMA Files
                  The NUMA Files

                  series · 6 books · 2004

                  similar bycontemporarythriller & suspensetenseadventurous

                  Clive Cussler's NUMA Files novels follow Kurt Austin, leader of the National Underwater and Marine Agency's Special Assignments Team, and his colleague Joe Zavala, through globe-spanning adventure-thrillers mixing action, exotic locations and speculative science. Lost City finds them investigating a life-extending enzyme discovered deep in the North Atlantic, and the string of deaths and disappearances surrounding its discovery. Zero Hour, Nighthawk and the following novels continue Austin's missions, later written with Graham Brown after original co-author Paul Kemprecos.

                • Cover of Hold Me Like a Breath
                  Hold Me Like a Breath

                  Tiffany Schmidt · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenseorganized crimeyoung adult

                  In Penelope Landlow's world, almost anything can be bought or sold. She's the daughter of one of the three crime families controlling the black market for organ transplants. Because of an autoimmune disorder that causes her to bruise easily, Penny is considered too "delicate" to handle the family business or even to step foot outside their estate. All Penny has ever wanted is independence, until she's suddenly thrust into the dangerous world all alone, forced to stay one step ahead of her family's enemies. As she struggles to survive the power plays of rival crime families, she realizes there's nothing she won't risk for the people she loves. (Book Jacket)

                • Cover of Street Rats
                  Street Rats

                  Tim Curran · standalone novel · 2003

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                  "Harry Swain and Jimmy "Blades" Circurro. One's a professional thief. The other's a professional swindler. A Milwaukee crime boss has put them together for the heist of a lifetime—an armored car robbery worth upwards of $15,000,000. It goes down smooth, it goes down clean. Because that's how Harry Swain does things. But no robbery is perfect. Not when Jimmy Blades is involved. All that money...he starts getting ideas. The kind of ideas that get other men killed. And now the cash is missing and two Russian hoods are dead. All evidence points to Harry Swain and his crew. One by one, they're turning up dead. A lot of nasty people want answers and Harry had better come up with some and fast. And he'd better do it before Jimmy Blades finds him. Because things are about to get messy." -- quoted from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2017-06-18.

                • Cover of The Great Zoo of China
                  The Great Zoo of China

                  Matthew Reilly · standalone novel · 2014

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                  The Great Zoo of China is a 2014 novel by Australian author Matthew Reilly. It was published in November 2014.

                • Cover of Ignition
                  Ignition

                  Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason · standalone novel · 1996

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                  From the front flap of the Forge first edition: "The launch of the shuttle Atlantis will make history. Another triumph for the space program and a political coup: a Russian cosmonaut is scheduled to perform the first spacewalk from an American unit. The checkout fail-safes are all go. The mission is proceeding like clockwork. The team of American and Russian astronauts are strapped in, the mission specialists in Houston see no hitches. No one knows the real danger... For as millions of viewers tune in to watch the countdown, there's nothing to indicate that what they're seeing is a prerecorded show. Terrorists have take over Launch Control at Cape Canaveral and are threatening to blow up the Atlantis in less than three hours - unless their demands are met. Only Colonel "Iceberg" Friese, the mission's former commander, invalided out with a broken foot, knows about the danger to his crew. Unknown to anyone, he's sneaked into the restricted zone. And now it's up to him to stop the clock before the countdown reaches... Ignition."

                • Cover of Cold Fury
                  Cold Fury

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspenseorganized crime+2 more

                • Cover of Luke Temple
                  Luke Temple

                  series · 2 books · 2012

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                • Cover of Dirk Pitt
                  Dirk Pitt

                  series · 12 books · 1973

                  completed

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                  Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels follow the title character, a two-fisted marine engineer and de facto field agent for the fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency, through globe-spanning adventures mixing undersea salvage, historical mystery, and international conspiracy. The run collected here spans The Mediterranean Caper (1973) through Valhalla Rising (2001), the earlier stretch of a series Cussler continued for decades with later co-authors.