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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 Second Glance

anchored on:literary & generalreincarnationnorth americacontemporaryemotional

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 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 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 Telegraph Avenue
                  Telegraph Avenue

                  Michael Chabon · standalone novel · 2012

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                  Telegraph Avenue is a novel by Michael Chabon, published on September 11, 2012. An enhanced e-book edition was released online on July 25, 2012. The novel's setting is North Oakland and Berkeley, California. The title refers to Telegraph Avenue, which runs through both cities.

                • Cover of Before I Fall
                  Before I Fall

                  series · 2 books · 2010

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                  Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall is a 2010 young-adult novel narrated by teenager Samantha Kingston, who is forced to relive the day of her death repeatedly over the course of a week. Attempting to understand why, Samantha tries different choices and actions each time through, some starkly out of character, as she reckons with her life and relationships. It was adapted into a 2017 film of the same name.

                • Cover of The Returned
                  The Returned

                  Jason Mott · standalone novel · 2013

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                  The Returned is the debut novel by American author Jason Mott, published in 2013. It is centered on the return of dead people to the living world and their impact on the daily lives of the people around them. The TV adaptation Resurrection was produced by ABC Studios and aired on March 9, 2014.

                • Cover of The Martian Child
                  The Martian Child

                  David Gerrold · standalone novel · 2002

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                  A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son

                • Cover of The Sentence
                  The Sentence

                  Louise Erdrich · standalone novel · 2021

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                  The Sentence is a 2021 novel by American author Louise Erdrich. The novel was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

                • Cover of Sing, Unburied, Sing
                  Sing, Unburied, Sing

                  Jesmyn Ward · standalone novel · 2017

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                  Sing, Unburied, Sing is the third novel by the American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2017. It focuses on a family in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017. The novel won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction.

                • Cover of Skylight Confessions
                  Skylight Confessions

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2007

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                  Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in theConnecticut countryside, to the avenues of Manhattan , and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. Ultimately, it falls to their grandson, Will, to solve the emotional puzzle of his family and of his own identity.

                • Cover of Remarkably Bright Creatures
                  Remarkably Bright Creatures

                  Shelby Van Pelt · standalone novel · 2022

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                  Remarkably Bright Creatures is a novel by American author Shelby Van Pelt. It was published in May 2022 by Ecco Press. It has been on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list multiple times.

                • Cover of Shoeless Joe
                  Shoeless Joe

                  W. P. Kinsella · standalone novel · 1982

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                  Shoeless Joe is a 1982 fabulist novel by Canadian author W. P. Kinsella that was later adapted into the 1989 film Field of Dreams, which was nominated for three Academy Awards.

                • Cover of The Probable Future
                  The Probable Future

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2003

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                  Alice Hoffman's most magical novel to date--three generations of extraordinary women are driven to unite in crisis and discover the rewards of reconciliation and love. Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people's dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window on the future--a future that she might not want to see. In The Probable Future this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past--and a very current murder--against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows's legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet and to a historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors. Poignant, arresting, unsettling, The Probable Future showcases the lavish literary gifts that have made Alice Hoffman one of America's most treasured writers.

                • Cover of The Book of Form and Emptiness
                  The Book of Form and Emptiness

                  Ruth Ozeki · standalone novel · 2021

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                  The Book of Form and Emptiness is a novel by American author Ruth Ozeki, published in 2021 by Viking. Ozeki's fourth novel, the book won the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction. The story follows a boy who hears voices from inanimate objects while the narrative explores themes of mental illness and bereavement.

                • Cover of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine
                  God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine

                  Kurt Vonnegut & Jr. · standalone novel · 1965

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                  The Rosewater Foundation was built to shield the family fortune from taxes, but its current steward, war veteran and committed alcoholic Eliot Rosewater, has other ideas: he moves the foundation's offices to rural Rosewater County, Indiana, and starts handing out 'unlimited amounts of love and limited sums of money' to anyone who asks. His disgusted father, Senator Lister Rosewater, watches the family name become a punchline. Meanwhile a distant, downtrodden cousin, Fred Rosewater, is approached by an ambitious young lawyer with a scheme to have Eliot declared insane and the fortune redirected. A satire of American philanthropy, class and sanity from Kurt Vonnegut.

                • Cover of Afterworlds
                  Afterworlds

                  Scott Westerfeld · standalone novel · 2014

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                  Alternates between a realistic story of a young author writing a "young adult Hindu paranormal romance" novel in New York City and chapters from that novel.

                • Cover of The Jane Austen Book Club
                  The Jane Austen Book Club

                  Karen Joy Fowler · standalone novel · 2004

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                  The Jane Austen Book Club is a 2004 novel by American author Karen Joy Fowler. The story, which takes place near Sacramento, California, centers around a book club consisting of five women and one man who meet once a month to discuss Jane Austen's six novels. The novel was a critical success and became a national bestseller.

                • Cover of The Overstory
                  The Overstory

                  Richard Powers · standalone novel · 2018

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                  The Overstory is a novel by American author Richard Powers, published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. The book follows nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. It features an innovative and non-linear narrative structure and explores themes of environmental activism and humanity's relationship with the natural world.

                • Cover of Mama Day
                  Mama Day

                  Gloria Naylor · standalone novel · 1988

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                  Mama Day is the third novel by Gloria Naylor. The story focuses upon the tragic love affair of "star-crossed" lovers Ophelia "Cocoa" Day and George Andrews. The setting of the novel is split between New York City, where George was born and raised and Ophelia has recently moved, and Willow Springs, a fictional community situated on a coastal island on the border of Georgia and South Carolina where Ophelia's family has lived for several generations. The novel takes place within the same fictional universe as some of Naylor's other novels, indicated through its passing references to events and characters from both Linden Hills and Bailey's Cafe.

                • Cover of LaRose
                  LaRose

                  Louise Erdrich · standalone novel · 2016

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                  LaRose is a novel by the Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich, published in 2016 by HarperCollins. The novel features the same setting as Erdrich's 2012 novel The Round House. The book received positive reviews from literary publications. It won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

                • Cover of Faithful
                  Faithful

                  Alice Hoffman · standalone novel · 2016

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                  Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion--from dark suffering to true happiness--a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls--including an angel who's been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

                • Cover of Ghost Boys
                  Ghost Boys

                  Jewell Parker Rhodes · standalone novel · 2018

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                  Ghost Boys is a 2018 middle-grade novel by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Set in Chicago, the novel follows the story of Jerome, a 12-year-old black boy who is shot and killed by a white police officer before coming back as a ghost. Emmett Till, a black boy who was murdered in 1955, features as another ghost in the text. Rhodes' novel has themes of racism and socio-economic injustice that are aimed at a younger audience.

                • Cover of Strays
                  Strays

                  Ron Koertge · standalone novel · 2007

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                  Recently orphaned, sixteen-year-old Ted O'Connor is sent to a foster home.

                • Cover of The Tiger's Wife
                  The Tiger's Wife

                  Téa Obreht · standalone novel · 2010

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                  Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, young physician Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man, would go on such a farfetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife.

                • Cover of The Leftovers
                  The Leftovers

                  Tom Perrotta · standalone novel · 2011

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                  The Leftovers is a 2011 satirical supernatural novel by American author Tom Perrotta. Set in the aftermath of a Rapture-like event in which 2% of Earth's human population vanished into thin air, it chronicles the lives of several individuals from a small New York town attempting to adjust to the significant cultural shift brought about by the event, while also navigating their personal trauma and losses.

                • Cover of The Monsters of Templeton
                  The Monsters of Templeton

                  Lauren Groff · standalone novel · 2008

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                  The Monsters of Templeton is a dramatic novel written by Lauren Groff. Groff was born and raised in Cooperstown, New York. The name Templeton draws from the name devised for the town by James Fenimore Cooper, Cooperstown's most renowned author, known for The Leatherstocking Tales. Groff draws in many of the legends of Cooperstown, especially those crafted by Cooper himself, and ties them together over the expanses of time, then weaves them in with fictional modern-day events. The book was released to great critical acclaim.

                • Cover of The Einsteins of Vista Point
                  The Einsteins of Vista Point

                  Ben Guterson · standalone novel · 2022

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                  "After the tragic loss of their sister, Zack and his siblings band together to investigate a Morse Code-inspired mystery in this stunning novel about grief and resilience. When Zack's younger sister dies in a tragic accident, his family moves to a small town in the Northwest to try and heal from all the pain. Eleven-year-old Zack blames himself for his sister's death, and he struggles to find any comfort in his new surroundings. Vista Point is home to many mysterious landmarks: The great domed Tower casts inscrutable shadows, and what is the cryptic message in its ceiling medallion? There are several hidden watering holes and even a secret cave in the woods with messages written on its walls. Zack, at first, feels lost in Vista Point. Until he meets Ann, a girl who lives in the area and shows Zack all the special places to be discovered. But there's something that seems a bit strange about Ann—and perhaps a secret she is keeping from him. With emotional depth, an unforgettable setting, and a winning cast of characters, this masterful novel thoughtfully explores the grieving process, and how a season of pain can evolve into a summer of healing." -- Amazon.com as of 2021-03-29.