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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 That Hell-Bound Train

anchored on:fantasydeal with the devilmid 20th centurydarkdark fantasybittersweet

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 The Damnation Game
                  The Damnation Game

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 1985

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasyfantasyhorror

                  Marty Strauss is a compulsive gambler fresh out of prison when he's hired as bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a reclusive tycoon whose fortune and continued existence trace back to a bargain struck decades earlier, during World War II, with a man named Mamoulian. That bargain is coming due: Mamoulian, who commands powers reaching well past death, wants what he's owed, and Whitehead's household -- his wife, his daughter Carys, his previous bodyguard -- is caught in the middle of a decades-old debt finally being called in. Marty, out of his depth from the start, finds himself the only one willing to stand against Mamoulian. Clive Barker's first novel.

                • Cover of To the Devil - a Daughter
                  To the Devil - a Daughter

                  Dennis Wheatley · standalone novel · 1953

                  similar bydeal with the devilmid 20th centurydarkdemonshorror

                  Beneath the azure sky of the French Riviera, Christina Mordant looks and behaves like any other attractive girl. But each night as darkness falls, the demon within her betrays its presence. A thousand miles away, deep in the Essex marshes, a priest of Satan is about to achieve his life's ambition: Canon Copely-Syle of Bentford Priory prepares for the virgin sacrifice which will give breath to the foul abomination he has created...

                • Cover of Julian
                  Julian

                  series · 19 books · 1976

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkfantasydark fantasydemons

                • Cover of Mister B. Gone
                  Mister B. Gone

                  Clive Barker · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasyfantasydemonshorror

                  Mister B. Gone is a short metafiction novel by Clive Barker, published in the United Kingdom and the United States in October 2007.

                • Cover of All Hallows' Eve
                  All Hallows' Eve

                  Charles Williams · standalone novel · 1945

                  similar bymid 20th centuryfantasydark+1 more

                  All Hallows' Eve is the last of the seven novels of the supernatural written by Charles Williams. Published by Faber and Faber in 1945, it went through three impressions that year and another in 1947. In 1948 it was published in the US by Pellegrini & Cudahy with an introduction by T. S. Eliot. There were two later translations into Italian and Spanish.

                • Cover of Fiend
                  Fiend

                  Alma Katsu · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkfantasydark fantasydemons

                  Imagine if the Sackler family had a demon at their beck and call. The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed. At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.

                • Cover of Hell's Bounty
                  Hell's Bounty

                  Joe R. Lansdale & John L. Lansdale · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasydemonshorror

                  Hell's Bounty is a horror novel written by American brothers Joe R. Lansdale and John L. Lansdale. It takes place in the old western town of Falling Rock. Bounty hunter Smith sets off a chain of events as he searches for one bad hombre Quill. He is blown to hell, literally, where he makes a deal with a bartender Snappy, who is really Satan. He will save Smith from the bowels of hell if he returns to Falling Rock and stops Quill who has made a deal with the "Old Ones" who are so evil even Satan can't abide. Smith teams up with a whip snapping redhead whore named Payday, a legless man called Undertaker, and a whisky drinking doctor to stop Quill who has turned into a winged demon and has turned the people of the town into ghouls to try to stop Smith and his band from ruining his plans.

                • Cover of The Devil's Engine
                  The Devil's Engine

                  series · 3 books · 2015

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdemonsdark fantasy+2 more

                • Cover of The Lantern's Ember
                  The Lantern's Ember

                  Colleen Houck · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bydeal with the devilfantasydarkdark fantasy

                  Five hundred years ago, Jack made a deal with the devil. It s difficult for him to remember much about his mortal days. So he focuses on fulfilling his sentence as a Lantern one of the watchmen who guard the portals to the Otherworld, a realm crawling with every nightmarish creature imaginable.

                • Cover of Hellraiser
                  Hellraiser

                  series · 5 books · 1991

                  similar bydarkdemonsdark fantasyhorror+2 more

                  Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart introduces the puzzle box that summons the Cenobites and the domestic horror story around it, later adapted into the Hellraiser film series. The Scarlet Gospels, written decades later, brings the character back for a direct confrontation with Barker's other recurring figure, occult detective Harry D'Amour. Other contributors have added further Hellraiser tie-in fiction, including prequel and screenplay-adaptation volumes, expanding the mythology started in the original novella.

                • Cover of Playing Devil's Advocate
                  Playing Devil's Advocate

                  Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkfantasydark fantasydemons

                  "Blayre Tabers has the perfect life or so it seems. That is until the day he comes home from school to find his parent's disgustingly mutilated corpses. Losing all sanity he runs away. Failed by the child welfare system designed to protect him, he spends the next ten years of his life in a downward spiral, sickeningly abused, twistedly tortured and finally—as an adult—homeless. Hating God he makes a deal with the devil to serve him. But what he doesn't realize is that the devil owns more than Blayre's soul. Blayre is furious to discover the devil's treachery and plots to not only pay the devil back for his deceit but regain the object the Dark One stole from him. With the help of a kind cop and a renegade demon he sets out to do what no man has ever done before and lived...double cross and defeat Satan himself!" — quoted from this book's ebook product page on Amazon as of 2018-01-30.

                • Cover of Strange Grace
                  Strange Grace

                  Tessa Gratton · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bydeal with the devilfantasydarkdark fantasy

                  Long ago, a village made a bargain with the devil: to ensure their prosperity, when the Slaughter Moon rises, the village must sacrifice a young man to the depths of the Devil's Forest. Only this year, the Slaughter Moon has risen early. Bound by duty, secrets, and the love they share for one another, Mariwen, a spirited witch; Rhun, the expected saint; and Arthur, a restless outcast, will each have a role to play as the devil demands a body to fill the bargain. But the devil these friends find is not the one they expect, and the lies they uncover will turn their town--and their hearts--inside out. Something's gone wrong with the bargain.... This description comes from the publisher.

                • Cover of Death Spell
                  Death Spell

                  David Sodergren · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasydemonshorror

                  ● "25 years ago, young businessman Ron Jarvis made a sinister deal that changed his life forever. The cost was high...but who can put a price on power? Now, Ron is the CEO of a global media empire, and one of the richest men in the world. And yet, to help his daughter, Ron will once more seek out the architect of that hideous pact, bringing death, despair, and total destruction to all around him in a jaw-dropping frenzy of outrageous, bloody carnage." ― quoted from this book's Amazon product page as 2025-09-28.

                • Cover of Melmoth
                  Melmoth

                  series · 9 books · 1820

                  completed

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkhorror+1 more

                • Cover of The Hell Candidate
                  The Hell Candidate

                  Graham Masterton · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasydemonshorror

                  Amazon: They said Hunter Peale didn't have a hope in hell of getting elected. They were wrong... He was a kindly, moderate man - with a less than moderate chance of winning. Then it all began to change... What power did Peale now have that brought men to their knees in abnormal pain - and made women writhe with unholy pleasure? The answer froze the spirit like a chill, rancid breath from the foul grave-stench mouth of Hell - for Peale had entered into a monstrous pact with none other than the Prince of [Darkness].

                • Cover of Kingdom of the Wicked (Kerri Maniscalco)
                  Kingdom of the Wicked (Kerri Maniscalco)

                  series · 6 books · 2020

                  similar byfantasydemons+3 more

                  Kerri Maniscalco's trilogy follows Emilia, a Sicilian witch whose twin sister is murdered by a serial killer targeting witches, forcing her into an uneasy bargain with Wrath, one of the seven princes of Hell, to hunt the culprit. Kingdom of the Wicked and its sequels, Kingdom of the Cursed and Kingdom of the Feared, escalate from that investigation into a wider entanglement with the political rivalries of Hell itself. The series pairs a murder-mystery hook with a slow-burn romance between Emilia and Wrath.

                • Cover of Inferno
                  Inferno

                  series · 2 books · 1976

                  similar byafterlife & underworldfantasydark+1 more

                  In Inferno, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle send a science fiction writer to his death and drop him into a modern-dress version of Dante's nine circles of Hell, where he must reason his way toward understanding why he has been damned. The 1976 novel was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the authors returned to the same character decades later in a sequel, Escape from Hell. Together the two books form a self-contained pair rather than an open-ended series.

                • Cover of The Devil of Echo Lake
                  The Devil of Echo Lake

                  Douglas Wynne · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdark fantasyhorror

                  Billy Moon would have given his life for rock 'n' roll stardom, but the Devil doesn't come that cheap. Goth rock idol Billy Moon has it all: money, fame, and a different girl in every city. But he also has a secret, one that goes all the way back to the night he almost took his own life. The night Trevor Rail, a shadowy record producer with a flair for the dark and esoteric, agreed to make him a star ... for a price. Now Billy has come to Echo Lake Studios to create the record that will make him a legend. A dark masterpiece like only Trevor Rail can fashion. But the woods of Echo Lake have a dark past, a past that might explain the mysterious happenings in the haunted church that serves as Rail's main studio. As the pressure mounts on Billy to fulfill Rail's vision, it becomes clear that not everyone will survive the project. It's time the Devil of Echo Lake had his due, and someone will have to pay.

                • Cover of Faust: Being the Historia von D. Johann Fausten Dem Wietbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartzhünstler: or, History of Dr. John Faust the Notorious Magician and Necromancer, As Written by His Familiar Servant and Disciple Christopher Wagner
                  Faust: Being the Historia von D. Johann Fausten Dem Wietbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartzhünstler: or, History of Dr. John Faust the Notorious Magician and Necromancer, As Written by His Familiar Servant and Disciple Christopher Wagner

                  Robert Nye · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bydeal with the devilfantasydarkdemons

                  Robert Nye's Faust is a cinematical trip that goes from comedy over drama and tragedy into hellish terror. A true work of genius, freeing the Faust-legend from the chains of romantisism and mixing it up with all things depraved and all things innovative.

                • Cover of The Devil's Advocate
                  The Devil's Advocate

                  Andrew Neiderman · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdemonshorror

                  When Kevin Taylor joins the Manhattan criminal law firm of John Milton & Associates, he's hit the big time. At last, he and his wife can enjoy the luxuries they've so desired--money, a chauffeur-driven limo, and a stunning home in a high-rise. Then Milton assigns Kevin one of the most notorious cases of the year, with a file that had been put together prior to the crime. Throwing himself into his work, Kevin begins to see a pattern of evil emerging from behind the firm's plush facade. Acquittal after acquittal, every criminal client walks free, and Kevin's suspicions slowly give way to terror. For Kevin has just become The Devil's Advocate.

                • Cover of Falling Angel
                  Falling Angel

                  William Hjortsberg · standalone novel · 1978

                  similar bymid 20th centurydarkdemonshorror

                  Falling Angel is a 1978 horror novel by American writer William Hjortsberg. Written in a hardboiled detective style with supernatural themes, it was adapted into the 1987 film Angel Heart.

                • Cover of The Sorrows of Satan
                  The Sorrows of Satan

                  Marie Corelli · standalone novel · 1895

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkfantasy

                  The Sorrows of Satan is an 1895 Faustian novel by Marie Corelli. It is widely regarded as one of the world's first best-sellers – partly due to an upheaval in the system British libraries used to purchase their books, and partly due to its popular appeal. Roundly condemned by contemporary literary critics for Corelli's moralistic and prosaic style, it nonetheless had strong supporters, including Oscar Wilde and various members of royalty.

                • Cover of Dante Valentine
                  Dante Valentine

                  series · 6 books · 2006

                  similar bydarkdemons+3 more

                  Working for the Devil opens Lilith Saintcrow's Dante Valentine series with Dante, a necromancer-for-hire who reluctantly takes a job from the Devil himself: kill a rogue demon, Vardimal Santino, in exchange for her life. The catch is that Santino isn't something that dies easily, and the job pulls Dante deeper into a world of demons and bargains than she planned for. Saintcrow continues the series through Dead Man Rising, The Devil's Right Hand, Saint City Sinners, and To Hell and Back.

                • Cover of Seven Footprints to Satan
                  Seven Footprints to Satan

                  A. Merritt · standalone novel · 1928

                  similar bydeal with the devildarkdemonshorror

                  From the back cover of Avon book 235: Women beyond compare, luxury without end, slaves of both sexes without number - all these were the incredible bait offered James Kirkham as he came to the throne of Satan. There, seven golden steps above him, sat the devil himself, Evil Incarnate, waiting for Kirkham to accept the hellish challenge. But to climb those seven steps meant a gamble - whose loss would be eternal torment! On Kirkham's daring depended not only a challenge to Hell itself but the life and love of the beautiful girl who had been pledged to him - but who was now enslaved by Satan!