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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 Shell Games

anchored on:science fictionsuperheronorth americamid 20th centuryalternate historygenetic engineering+1 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 about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about 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 Midwich Cuckoos
                  The Midwich Cuckoos

                  John Wyndham · standalone novel · 1957

                  similar bydarkmid 20th centuryaliensscience fictiontense

                  The Midwich Cuckoos is a 1957 science fiction novel written by the English author John Wyndham. It tells the tale of an English village in which the women become pregnant by brood parasitic aliens. The book has been praised by many critics, including the dramatist Dan Rebellato, who called it "a searching novel of moral ambiguities", and the novelist Margaret Atwood, who called the book Wyndham's "chef d'œuvre". The book has been adapted for film, radio, and television.

                • Cover of The Child Buyer
                  The Child Buyer

                  John Hersey · standalone novel · 1960

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americamid 20th centuryscience fiction

                  The Child Buyer is John Hersey's 1960 novel about a project to engineer super-intelligent persons for a project whose aim is never definitely stated. Told entirely in the form of minutes from a State Senate Standing Committee, it relates the story of the appearance and efforts of a mysterious stranger in the small town of Pequot, and the repercussions of his attempt to buy a boy, Barry Rudd.

                • Cover of A Report from Group 17
                  A Report from Group 17

                  Robert C. O'Brien · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americamid 20th centuryscience fictiontense

                  A Report from Group 17, published in 1972, is a science-fiction thriller written by Robert Leslie Conly under his pen name Robert C. O'Brien. Set in Washington, D.C., during the Cold War, the story deals particularly with the danger of developing bioweapons. The potential cause of conflict is a resurgence of Nazism in Europe. A 12-year-old girl who lives near a Soviet estate in Maryland becomes a victim of intrigue when she is kidnapped for use as an experimental subject. Themes include the threat of modern war to human survival, the moral responsibility of scientists, and the importance of both individual freedom and sympathetic instincts. Following two novels for children, A Report from Group 17 was the first of two dystopian novels that O'Brien wrote for adults. His last novel, Z for Zachariah (1974), depicts a conflict between two survivors of a nuclear war and deals with similar themes.

                • Cover of The Grays
                  The Grays

                  Whitley Strieber · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americaaliensscience fictiontense

                  Millions of people are confronting aliens that authorities say do not exist. Whitley Strieber -- author of the legendary, #1 bestseller Communion, which detailed his own close encounters -- now returns to the riddle of aliens with The Grays. Drawing on a lifetime of research, Strieber offers up a fictional account of the conspiracy behind alien presence on Earth while also giving us a startling look inside the alien mind that will astound, frighten, and enthrall readers. Meet the Three Thieves, a group of Grays assigned to duty in a small Kentucky town. For decades, they have abducted its residents and manipulated bloodlines trying to create an ultra-intelligent human being. Nine year-old Conner Callahan will face the ultimate terror as he struggles to understand who he has been bred to be, and what he must do to save humanity. Meet Colonel Michael Wilkes, the head of a select group of government and military officials who have been monitoring the Grays for years. Wilkes has done everything in his power to keep the secret of the Grays from the public. But when the Grays begin to reveal themselves, Wilkess fear of occupation forces him to set in motion his own sinister plan to ensure the survival of humanity, but at what cost? The fate of the human race lies with one woman, Lauren Glass, whose unique ability to communicate with the last remaining captive Gray, known as A for Adam, may be the only way humans can truly unravel the Grays ultimate plan. The Grays is a mind-bending journey behind the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the subject of aliens, written by the fields great master. This book will make you think deeply, not only about the mystery of who the Grays are, but who exactly we are.

                • Cover of Patternist
                  Patternist

                  series · 6 books · 1976

                  completed

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarkscience fiction+3 more

                  The Patternist series is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia E. Butler that detail a secret history continuing from the Ancient Egyptian period to the far future that involves telepathic mind control and an extraterrestrial plague. A profile of Butler in Black Women in America notes that the themes of the series include "racial and gender-based animosity, the ethical implications of biological engineering, the question of what it means to be human, ethical and unethical uses of power, and how the assumption of power changes people."

                • Cover of The Kraken Wakes
                  The Kraken Wakes

                  John Wyndham · standalone novel · 1953

                  similar bydarkmid 20th centuryaliensscience fictiontense

                  " Behind a spectacular meteor shower actually hides the beginning of an invasion by a mysterious and powerful alien race. Earth's life is disrupted by the attacks of extraterrestrials whose war machines, emerging from the depths of the oceans, seem indestructible. The coalitioned forces of the whole world are worthless, powerless in the face of the indecipherable and deadly plans of a superior intelligence, capable of bringing the entire planet to the brink of catastrophe" Goodreads May 20, 2022

                • Cover of Camp Concentration
                  Camp Concentration

                  Thomas M. Disch · standalone novel · 1968

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarkmid 20th centuryscience fiction+1 more

                  Camp Concentration is a science fiction novel by American writer Thomas M. Disch. It was first serialized in four parts in New Worlds from July to October 1967 and was published in book form in the United Kingdom in 1968, followed by a first U.S. edition in 1969.

                • Cover of I Am Legend
                  I Am Legend

                  Richard Matheson · standalone novel · 1954

                  similar bydarkmid 20th centurynorth americatensescience fiction

                  The last human survivor of the vampire epidemic has to maintain his defences against their onslaught, while attempting to research the cause and possibly solution to the plague. Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can a man survive like this?

                • Cover of Midnight
                  Midnight

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americascience fictiontense

                  A wealthy tech entrepreneur, intending to create superhumans by infecting them with nanotech to assist their physical and mental abilities, picks a California town as his secret pilot project, but things go terribly wrong.

                • Cover of When She Woke
                  When She Woke

                  Hillary Jordan · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americascience fictiontense

                  When She Woke is a science fiction novel by American author Hillary Jordan, published in October 2011. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Turkish, German, Portuguese and Chinese. The novel is a dystopian reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, set in a future theocratic America where rather than being imprisoned and rehabilitated, criminals are punished by being "chromed" – having their skin color genetically altered to fit their crime – and released into the general population to survive as best they can.

                • Cover of Invasion
                  Invasion

                  Robin Cook · standalone novel · 1997

                  similar bygenetic engineeringnorth americaaliensscience fictiontense+1 more

                  Earth is bombarded from space by small disks which, in addition to having powerful physical armaments, when handled activate latent viral DNA which causes humans to mutate into alien beings; a small group recognize the danger and attempt to develop a biological counterweapon.

                • Cover of The Puppet Masters
                  The Puppet Masters

                  Robert A. Heinlein · standalone novel · 1951

                  similar bymid 20th centurynorth americaaliensscience fictiontense

                  Parasitical aliens attach themselves to human hosts and take over their bodies. Two spies are sent to find out what's happening, but the extent is much farther than they knew. With access to the humans' memories, the aliens quietly invade the government and start taking over.

                • Cover of Not This August
                  Not This August

                  C. M. Kornbluth · standalone novel · 1955

                  similar bydarknorth americamid 20th centuryscience fictionalternate history+1 more

                  Not This August, also known as Christmas Eve, is a Hugo Award shortlisted science fiction novel by Cyril M. Kornbluth. It was originally published in 1955 by Doubleday. It was serialized in Maclean's magazine (Canada) in May and June 1955. A revised edition with a new foreword and afterword by Frederik Pohl was published in 1981 by Tor Books, ISBN 0-523-48518-2. The title comes from author Ernest Hemingway's "Notes on the Next War".

                • Cover of Ill Wind
                  Ill Wind

                  Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americascience fictiontense

                  From the flaps of the Forge first printing: "A supertanker has crashed off the shores of San Francisco, producing the largest oil spill in history. Desperate to avert an ecological - and public relations - disaster, a multinational oil company releases an untested virus designed to break up the spill. A virus that spreads like wildfire on the wind, destroying anything made of petroleum - destroying gasoline in automobile tanks, plastics, nylon, the very fabric of modern civilization itself. Dr. Spencer Lockwood, one of the few scientists to recognize the danger, tries to alert government and industry to the impending danger. But his warnings go unheeded and the devastation mounts. As America descends into savagery, Lockwood forges a courageous band of scientists to carry out a daring plan to restore order. But humanity's last hope my be snuffed out by a ruthless general driven by an insatiable desire for power. A riveting and inspiring saga of ecological catastrophe and human survival, Ill Wind is all the more frightening because it could actually happen. Kevin Anderson, a technical consultant for the Air Force, and Doug Beason, a former science advisor o the Reagan administration, have drawn upon the latest breakthroughs in biotechnology to create a disaster scenario that is terrifying in its plausibility."

                • Cover of Darker Than You Think
                  Darker Than You Think

                  Jack Williamson · standalone novel · 1948

                  similar bydarknorth americamid 20th century+2 more

                  Darker Than You Think is a science fantasy and horror novel by American writer Jack Williamson. Originally a novelette, it was expanded into novel length and published by Fantasy Press in 1948. The short version was published in Unknown in 1940.

                • Cover of MaddAddam
                  MaddAddam

                  series · 3 books · 2003

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americascience fiction

                  Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam, 2003-2013) is set around a genetically engineered pandemic unleashed deliberately by the brilliant, disillusioned scientist Crake, who intends the deadly 'BlyssPluss' pill to wipe out humanity and clear the way for the gentler, engineered Crakers he has designed to replace it. Told from the perspectives of survivors including Crake's old friend Jimmy (now calling himself Snowman), the trilogy pieces together the pandemic's causes and its aftermath from multiple, overlapping vantage points.

                • Cover of Unwind Dystology
                  Unwind Dystology

                  series · 5 books · 2007

                  similar bygenetic engineeringnorth americadarkscience fictiontense

                  Neal Shusterman's Unwind Dystology opens in a United States reshaped by the resolution to a war over reproductive rights: parents can retroactively have a teenager "unwound," their body disassembled for transplant on the premise that nothing technically dies since every part lives on in someone else. The first novel follows three teens fleeing that fate, and the sequels widen the same dystopia's cast and consequences across a four-book arc plus companion material. It is grim speculative fiction built to ask hard bioethical questions rather than offer comfort.

                • Cover of Blood Music
                  Blood Music

                  Greg Bear · standalone novel · 1985

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americascience fiction

                  Blood Music is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. It is an expanded version of a short story of the same title, originally published in the June 1983 issue of Analog and the winner of both the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo awards for Best Novelette. The novel won the 1986 Prix Apollo Award, given to the best science fiction novel published in France during the preceding year, under the title La Musique du sang.

                • Cover of The Hunger Games
                  The Hunger Games

                  series · 3 books · 2008

                  part of The Hunger Games Universe

                  similar bydarknorth americascience fictiontense

                  The Hunger Games is a series of young adult dystopian novels written by American author Suzanne Collins. The series consists of a trilogy that follows teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as two prequels. The Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in Panem, a post-apocalyptic North American country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and 12 districts in varying states of poverty. As punishment for rebellion, the Capitol hosts an annual battle royale competition called The Hunger Games. Each of the 12 districts must send two children between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate, and the last surviving child is dubbed the victor.

                • Cover of The World Jones Made
                  The World Jones Made

                  Philip K. Dick · standalone novel · 1956

                  similar bydarknorth americascience fictiontense+2 more

                  The World Jones Made is a 1956 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, examining notions of precognition, humanity, and politics. It was first published by Ace Books as one half of Ace Double D-150, bound dos-à-dos with Agent of the Unknown by Margaret St. Clair.The story takes place after a nuclear war in which society is dominated by relativism, which rejects absolute truths and preaches tolerance as the highest principle. The mutant Floyd Jones, who can see into the future, plans to overthrow the system and colonise space. The story ends with the defeat of Jones, whose plans fail despite his ability to see the future due to the immutability of fate.

                • Cover of The 5th Wave
                  The 5th Wave

                  series · 4 books · 2013

                  similar bynorth americadarkaliensscience fictiontense

                  Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave opens after a series of escalating alien attacks has already devastated Earth's population and infrastructure, following sixteen-year-old survivor Cassie Sullivan as she searches for her younger brother while trying to work out who, among the remaining humans, can still be trusted. The trilogy is young-adult science fiction that treats its alien-invasion premise as a survival and paranoia story more than a war story.

                • Cover of Firestarter
                  Firestarter

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bydarknorth americatensescience fiction+1 more

                  WorldCat: Innocence and beauty ignite with evil and terror... First, a man and a woman are subjects of a top-secret government experiment designed to produce extraordinary psychic powers. Then, they are married and have a child. A daughter. Early on the daughter shows signs of a wild and horrifying force growing within her. Desperately, her parents try to train her to keep that force in check, to 'act normal'. Now the government wants its brainchild back for its own insane ends.

                • Cover of The Bad Place
                  The Bad Place

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bygenetic engineeringdarknorth americatense

                  The Bad Place is a horror novel by American writer Dean Koontz, released in 1990. It includes elements of horror, suspense, and mystery, and is presented partially as a twist on the private eye drama. The story follows Frank Pollard, a man who wakes up each night with no memory of where he has been or what he has done, only to find himself covered in injuries or in possession of strange items. As his condition worsens, private investigators Bobby and Julie Dakota are hired to track him and uncover the truth behind his blackouts. Their investigation leads them into a disturbing web of genetic experimentation, family secrets, and a hidden force manipulating human lives from the shadows. As the plot unfolds, the novel reveals that Frank and others are being pursued by powerful, almost inhuman figures connected to a twisted experiment involving selective breeding and enhanced abilities. The Dakotas become entangled in a struggle not only to save Frank but also to survive against forces that seem to operate beyond normal human limits. Themes in the novel include identity, memory loss, the abuse of science, and the nature of evil. Koontz blends psychological horror with fast-paced action, creating a narrative that shifts between detective fiction and supernatural thriller. The book received generally positive reception from readers who enjoyed Koontz’s signature suspense style, though some critics noted its complex and sometimes chaotic plot structure. Over time, it has remained one of his more memorable early-1990s works due to its unusual blend of genres and its dark, unsettling tone.

                • Cover of Alas, Babylon
                  Alas, Babylon

                  Pat Frank · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar bynorth americamid 20th centuryscience fictiontense+1 more

                  Classic novel of nuclear war and aftermath in rural Florida. From the back cover of a Bantam Pathfinder edition: "The day that the bomb dropped the thousands of years of "progress" that had covered the treacheries and weaknesses of ordinary man with a thin veneer of civilization were dissolved and melted like snow on the desert's dusty face. Then - the law of the jungle reigned but in the wreckage a few courageous survivors, men and women with the guts to have hope, were determined to build a new and better world on the ruins of the old. This is their story."