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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 Strange Objects

anchored on:literary & generaloceaniahistorical fictionidentityfamily secretsislands+2 more

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Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories 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 The Prestige
                  The Prestige

                  Christopher Priest · standalone novel · 1995

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                  A magician called Borden (at least in private) writes his own version of his life as a magician. There's a lot of focus on a trick, where he seems to move across any width of stage in an instant, and on a feud with another magician, Angier. The account includes passages, where he can't decide what exactly to write, arguing with himself. 3 generations later a Borden (at least biologically) learns about his ancestor. He's also convinced, he somehow has a twin brother, who's happy about this development.

                • Cover of The Blind Assassin
                  The Blind Assassin

                  Margaret Atwood · standalone novel · 2000

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                  "Considerable sf content is also concealed in her Booker Prize-winning The Blind Assassin (2000), a novel whose conventional twentieth-century Canadian frame story of thwarted and secret-ridden family life is folded around a very extensive, and in many ways much more interesting science-fictional Pulp magazine adventure (after which the novel is named)." - {{SFE}}'s author page (2021-10-30)

                • Cover of The Tragedy of Arthur
                  The Tragedy of Arthur

                  Arthur Phillips · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar bymysteriousidentityfamily secretsliterary & generalreflectivehistorical fiction

                  The Tragedy of Arthur is a 2011 novel by the American author Arthur Phillips. The narrative concerns the publication of a recently discovered Arthurian play attributed to William Shakespeare, which the main narrator, "Arthur Phillips", believes to be a forgery produced by his father. It was published by Random House.

                • Cover of Pictures in the Dark
                  Pictures in the Dark

                  Gillian Cross · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar bymysteriousidentityfamily secretsliterary & generalyoung adult

                  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 Many Lives of John Stone
                  The Many Lives of John Stone

                  Linda Buckley-Archer · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bymysteriousidentityfamily secretsreflectiveliterary & generalfantasy

                  When seventeen-year-old Spark takes a summer job working at a secluded house in England, organizing journals that span centuries and all written in the same hand, she discovers her true connection to the people who live there and the trait that makes them unique.

                • Cover of Red Shift
                  Red Shift

                  Alan Garner · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar bymysteriousidentityliterary & generalhistorical fiction+1 more

                  Quoting that 1978 review article by Brian Lee: Red Shift [after The Owl Service] was again about the relationship between two adolescents, but interwoven in their love story were two other strands: one about a group of Roman legionaires 'going tribal' among warring factions of the British (the parallel and the brutal language are obviously those of the Americans among the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh); the other strand is about the massacre of a village on the Welsh border during the Civil War.{{BREAK}} Undoubtedly, Red Shift is a brilliantly written and gripping book. The difficulty about it is that Garner makes no concessions to his readers (and on the book jacket he makes it clear that it is for children). It is told almost entirely in cryptic conversation with minimal clues to the identity of the speakers. He switches from strand to strand of the story without warning. The book cannot be understood and appreciated at one hasty reading. It is worth serious study, but will children persevere? In her introduction to the 1973 edition of Children's Books of the Year, critic and reviewer Elaine Moss says: Spurred on by the publication of Alan Garner's literary crossword puzzle Red Shift ... many of us asked ourselves where children's publishing should end and adult begin? For Children's Books of the Year I have drawn the line below Red Shift and excluded it ... Alan Garner, in deliberately choosing an avant-garde form, is also choosing an advanced, sophisticated audience for his book. Alan Garner himself seems to have come around to this view. This year a television adaptation of Red Shift was screened at peak viewing time with no mention of the fact that it was originally published as a children's novel. [end quotation from the review article; ellipses by Lee]

                • Cover of Alias Grace
                  Alias Grace

                  Margaret Atwood · standalone novel · 1996

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                  Alias Grace is a historical fiction novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

                • Cover of Piranesi
                  Piranesi

                  Susanna Clarke · standalone novel · 2020

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                  A man lives in a huge isolated labyrinthine building partially submerged in an ocean, together with another man and 13 skeletons, which is the only world he recalls.

                • Cover of The Magus
                  The Magus

                  John Fowles · standalone novel · 1965

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                  The Magus (1965) is a postmodern novel by British author John Fowles, telling the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young British graduate who is teaching English on a small Greek island. Urfe becomes embroiled in the psychological illusions of a master trickster, which become increasingly dark and serious. Considered an example of metafiction, it was the first novel written by Fowles but his third book to be published. A revised edition was published in 1977.

                • Cover of Lost
                  Lost

                  Gregory Maguire · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar byidentityfamily secretsliterary & generalreflective+1 more

                  Lost is a 2001 novel by American author Gregory Maguire. Unlike many of Maguire's other adult novels, Lost is set in the real world. The novel's concept is that the protagonist is a distant relative of the man who inspired Charles Dickens' character of Ebenezer Scrooge.

                • Cover of Cloud Atlas
                  Cloud Atlas

                  David Mitchell · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byidentityliterary & generalhistorical fictionepistolary+3 more

                  Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories in different writing styles that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawaii in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title references a piece of music by Toshi Ichiyanagi.

                • Cover of Circle of Stones
                  Circle of Stones

                  Catherine Fisher · standalone novel · 2014

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                  The mysterious Circus--a circular street of thirty houses--in Bath, England, provides the hub for three intertwining stories about a contemporary girl with a terrible past, an eighteenth-century architect obsessed with druids, and a prehistoric king who learns to fly. Through three voices, mysteries are revealed linking Sulis, a teenage girl with a mysterious past, Zac, apprenticed to an architect obsessed with Druidic mysteries in 1740, and a druid king who discovers the healing waters of a magical spring.

                • Cover of The Time of the Ghost
                  The Time of the Ghost

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1981

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                  The Time of the Ghost is a supernatural English-language children's novel by Diana Wynne Jones, published by Macmillan in 1981. Set in the English countryside, it features a teenage ghost who is one of four sisters, and observes the family, unable to remember which one she is. She is from seven years in the future, in the aftermath of her "accident", so it is a kind of a time slip story, but she has no memories of those seven years.

                • Cover of The Snake-Stone
                  The Snake-Stone

                  Berlie Doherty · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byidentityfamily secretsliterary & general+1 more

                  "James is a championship diver, with a shot for the Olympics. But when he thinks about his birth mother, something in him sinks like a stone. His adoptive parents love him, and his father is a terrific diving coach--yet even they cannot tell him who he really is. So James breaks training and runs off to the farmland of his birth, with nothing but a mysterious stone shaped like a snake. Can he use it to unlock his past?"

                • Cover of Double Identity
                  Double Identity

                  Margaret Peterson Haddix · standalone novel · 2005

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

                • Cover of The Folk Keeper
                  The Folk Keeper

                  Franny Billingsley · standalone novel · 1999

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                  Orphan Corinna disguises herself as a boy to pose as a Folk Keeper, one who keeps the Evil Folk at bay, and discovers her heritage as a seal maiden when she is taken to live with a wealthy family in their manor by the sea.

                • Cover of There Will Be Lies
                  There Will Be Lies

                  Nick Lake · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bymysteriousidentityfamily secretsyoung adult+1 more

                  "Shelby Jane Cooper is seventeen, pretty and quiet. It's just Shelby and her mom, Shaylene, a court stenographer who wears pyjama jeans, stitches tapestry, eats ice-cream for dinner and likes to keep Shelby safe. So safe she barely goes out. So safe she doesn't go to school. Because anything could happen, to a girl like Shelby. Anything. When Shelby gets knocked down by a car, it's not just her leg that's broken: Shelby's world is shattered. Her mom turns up to collect her and drives off into the night, like it's the beginning of a road trip, like two criminals on the run, like Thelma and Louise or Bonnie and Clyde. And somehow, everywhere she looks, there's a coyote watching her, talking to her, telling her not to believe. Who is Shelby Jane Cooper? If the person who keeps you safe also tells you lies, who can you trust?" (toppsta.com)

                • Cover of Shadow of a Hero
                  Shadow of a Hero

                  Peter Dickinson · standalone novel · 1994

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                  In 1989, Letta, an English teenager, learns of her heritage from her grandfather, great-grandson of the legendary hero of Varina, as he becomes involved in the nationalistic political struggles in Eastern Europe.

                • Cover of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
                  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

                  Aimee Bender · standalone novel · 2010

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                  The story follows a girl with a talent, from childhood to young adulthood. Rose has the ability to taste emotions in the food she eats, which she discovers on her ninth birthday, tasting in her birthday cake the emotions of her mother who baked it.

                • Cover of Orlando: A Biography
                  Orlando: A Biography

                  Virginia Woolf · standalone novel · 1928

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                  Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928, inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend. It is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.

                • Cover of Draw the Dark
                  Draw the Dark

                  Ilsa J. Bick · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar bymysteriousidentityfamily secretsyoung adult

                  Seventeen-year-old Christian Cage lives with his uncle in Winter, Wisconsin, where his nightmares, visions, and strange paintings draw him into a mystery involving German prisoners of war, a mysterious corpse, and Winter's last surviving Jew.

                • Cover of My Life As a Fake
                  My Life As a Fake

                  Peter Carey · standalone novel · 2003

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                  My Life as a Fake is a 2003 novel by Australian writer Peter Carey based on the Ern Malley hoax of 1943, in which two poets created a fictitious poet, Ern Malley, and submitted poems in his name to the literary magazine Angry Penguins.

                • Cover of Todd Family
                  Todd Family

                  series · 2 books · 2013

                  similar byfamily secretsliterary & generalreflectivehistorical fiction+1 more

                  Kate Atkinson's Life After Life gives Ursula Todd, born on a snowy night in 1910, a strange gift: whenever she dies, she's born again into a slightly altered version of the same life, gradually piecing together enough intuition across her many deaths to try to change the course of the twentieth century's worst events. The companion novel A God in Ruins turns to Ursula's brother Teddy, a bomber pilot, following his one, single life forward from the war through old age. The two books share a family and a set of preoccupations -- memory, war, chance -- without forming a conventional sequential series.

                • Cover of The Morningside
                  The Morningside

                  Téa Obreht · standalone novel · 2024

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                  The Morningside is the third novel by American writer Téa Obreht. It was published on March 19, 2024 by Penguin Random House.