Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

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 Stork

anchored on:urban fantasynorth americacontemporaryyoung adultcoming of ageidentity+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 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 Fire and Hemlock
                  Fire and Hemlock

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of ageidentitycontemporaryyoung adultmythic fantasyfantasy

                  At nineteen, Polly has two sets of sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting memories, the real-life ones of school days and her parents' divorce, and the heroic adventure ones that began the day she accidentally gate-crashed a funeral and met the cellist Thomas Lynn.

                • Cover of Bone Gap
                  Bone Gap

                  Laura Ruby · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of ageidentitycontemporarynorth americayoung adultsmall town

                  Eighteen-year-old Finn, an outsider in his quiet Midwestern town, is the only witness to the abduction of town favorite Roza, but his inability to distinguish between faces makes it difficult for him to help with the investigation, and subjects him to even more ridicule and bullying.

                • Cover of The Dark Elite
                  The Dark Elite

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar bycoming of agecontemporaryurban fantasyyoung adultnorth america+2 more

                • Cover of Double Identity
                  Double Identity

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of ageidentitycontemporarynorth americayoung adult

                  Double Identity is a 2005 young adult novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

                • Cover of The Curse Workers
                  The Curse Workers

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyyoung adultnorth americafantasy+2 more

                  Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy is set in an alternate America where 'curse work' — magic that harms or transforms through touch — is illegal, enforced through gloves and Prohibition-era-style crime families. It follows Cassel Sharpe, the only non-worker in a family of con artists and workers, as he tries to stay out of his family's schemes despite his own hidden connection to their world. The series runs from White Cat through two further novels.

                • Cover of Reason Cansino
                  Reason Cansino

                  series · 3 books · 2005

                  similar bycoming of agecontemporaryurban fantasyyoung adultfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of Pictures in the Dark
                  Pictures in the Dark

                  Gillian Cross · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of ageidentitycontemporaryyoung adult+1 more

                  A chance photograph taken for the school Camera Club draws Charlie into the emotionally troubled lives of his classmate Jennifer's family, especially that of her younger brother who harbors an astounding secret.

                • Cover of The Magic Nation Thing
                  The Magic Nation Thing

                  Zilpha Keatley Snyder · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of agecontemporaryurban fantasynorth americafantasy+1 more

                  Abby O'Malley is a girl who likes things to make sense. School makes sense, and her best friend Paige makes sense (most of the time), but Abby's flighty mother never makes sense. Abby's mom seems to think that she and Abby are descended from a line of witches, and that they have special powers--psychic powers that don't make sense at all. The problem is, Abby knows that she can do certain things that other people can't. Sometimes, when she holds an object in her hand, she's overpowered by sounds and pictures that show where the owner is and what he or she is doing. Abby thinks of this as her "magic nation," because that is what her kindergarten teacher told her it was called. Now 11, Abby has an inkling that her teacher may have been saying it was her "imagination," which unfortunately, she knows it is not. Now some things are happening in her mother's detective agency--cases where Abby's magic nation thing might come in handy. But does Abby want to admit that such a sensible girl could have such an unsensible power?From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of Elatsoe
                  Elatsoe

                  series · 2 books · 2020

                  similar bycoming of agecontemporarynorth americayoung adultfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of The Dark Is Rising
                  The Dark Is Rising

                  series · 5 books · 1965

                  similar bycontemporarymythic fantasyfantasy+4 more

                  The Dark Is Rising Sequence is a series of five contemporary fantasy novels for older children and young adults that were written by the British author Susan Cooper and published from 1965 to 1977. The first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, was originally conceived as a stand-alone novel, and the sequence gets its name from the second novel in the series, The Dark Is Rising. The Dark Is Rising Sequence is used as an overarching title in several omnibus, boxed-set, and coordinated editions; but the title of The Dark Is Rising is also used for the whole series.

                • Cover of American Gods
                  American Gods

                  series · 10 books · 1999

                  similar bycontemporarymythic fantasyfantasy+4 more

                  Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) follows Shadow Moon, an ex-convict who takes a job as bodyguard to a mysterious drifter who is secretly the Norse god Odin, and is drawn into a brewing conflict between the old immigrant gods of myth and the new gods of media, technology, and modern American life. Gaiman's 2005 novel Anansi Boys is set in the same mythological world and shares the trickster god Mr. Nancy, but follows a different protagonist and story, making it a loose companion rather than a direct sequel.

                • Cover of Magic Street
                  Magic Street

                  Orson Scott Card · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymysteriousidentitycontemporaryurban fantasynorth americafantasy

                  Magic Street (2005) is an urban fantasy novel by American writer Orson Scott Card. This book follows the magical events in the Baldwin Hills section of contemporary Los Angeles, including the life of protagonist Mack Street, his foster brother Cecil Tucker, a trickster identified variously as Bag Man, Puck, Mr. Christmas, and numerous other members of this upscale community of African-Americans.

                • Cover of This Poison Heart
                  This Poison Heart

                  series · 2 books · 2021

                  similar bycontemporarycoming of agenorth americayoung adultfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of The Colorado Kid
                  The Colorado Kid

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar bymysteriousidentitycontemporarynorth americasmall town

                  The Colorado Kid is a mystery novel by American writer Stephen King, published by the Hard Case Crime imprint in 2005. The book was initially issued in one paperback-only edition by the specialty crime and mystery publishing house. King's next novel for Hard Case Crime was Joyland, which was published in June 2013. Hard Case Crime reissued The Colorado Kid in an illustrated paperback edition in May 2019.

                • Cover of The Lynburn Legacy
                  The Lynburn Legacy

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar bycoming of agecontemporaryurban fantasyyoung adultsmall townfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of The Shadow Society
                  The Shadow Society

                  Marie Rutkoski · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of ageidentitycontemporarynorth americayoung adult+1 more

                  Sixteen-year-old Darcy Jones knows little about her past except that she was abandoned outside a Chicago firehouse at age five, but when the mysterious Conn arrives at her high school she begins to discover things about her past that she is not sure she likes.

                • Cover of The Land of Laughs
                  The Land of Laughs

                  Jonathan Carroll · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bymysteriousidentitycontemporarynorth americasmall townfantasy

                  WorldCat: Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn't know who he is or what he wants--in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children's tales who died at forty-four. Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France's hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France's biography. Warned in advance that France's family may oppose them, they're surprised to find France's daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page...leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake.

                • Cover of Becca King
                  Becca King

                  series · 4 books · 2012

                  similar bycontemporarynorth americayoung adult+3 more

                • Cover of Castleview
                  Castleview

                  Gene Wolfe · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporaryurban fantasynorth americasmall townfantasy+1 more

                  From the back cover of the first Tor paperback printing: "In the town of Castleview, Illinois, Tom Howard is murdered at the factory he manages - on the same day that Will E. Shields and his family, newly come to Castleview, arrive with a realtor in tow to see Howard's house. From an attic window, Shields glimpses the phantom castle that has given the town its name. They are discussing the house with Sally Howard when the police arrive bearing the dreadful news. Then, driving back to the motel, Shields nearly hits a gigantic horseman in the rain... beginning a series of collisions with the mythological that only Gene Wolfe could tell."

                • Cover of The Best-Kept Secret
                  The Best-Kept Secret

                  Emily Rodda · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of agecontemporaryfantasy+3 more

                  Eleven-year-old Jo takes a magical carousel ride seven years into the future, where she and her fellow travelers face a decision involving a possible change in the nature of reality.

                • Cover of Fault Lines (Tim Powers)
                  Fault Lines (Tim Powers)

                  series · 3 books · 1992

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasynorth americafantasy+1 more

                  Tim Powers' Fault Lines novels (Last Call, 1992; Expiration Date, 1996; Earthquake Weather, 1997) are loosely connected supernatural thrillers set in a hidden-magic version of California. Last Call builds its occult conflict around a tarot-based magic system playing out between Los Angeles and Las Vegas; Expiration Date is only obliquely tied to it; and Earthquake Weather draws the threads of both earlier books into a single closing story.

                • WV
                  Welsh Virginia

                  series · 8 books · 2012

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporaryurban fantasyyoung adultnorth americafantasy

                • Cover of The Gathering
                  The Gathering

                  Isobelle Carmody · standalone novel · 1993

                  similar bymysteriouscoming of agecontemporaryyoung adultsmall townfantasy+1 more

                  The Gathering is an allegorical 1993 Australian young adults' novel written by fantasy author Isobelle Carmody. The book was published by Puffin Books Australia in 1993, The Gathering has sold over 70 000 copies in Australia and New Zealand alone. The book was a joint recipient of the 1993 Children's Peace Literature Award and was also named Book of the Year in 1994 by the Children's Book Council of Australia. In 1994, the novel was also integrated into the literature curriculum for the junior years of Secondary Education in the Australian state of Victoria.

                • Cover of Cainsville
                  Cainsville

                  series · 21 books · 2011

                  similar bymysteriouscontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+3 more