More like The Sharpest Claw
anchored on:afterlife & underworld
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- The Hobbit
series2 books1937
completed
part of Tolkien's legendarium
similar byfantasywhimsical+2 more
The Hobbit (1937) is J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel following the reluctant burglar Bilbo Baggins, who joins a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf on a journey to reclaim treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. It stands as a complete adventure on its own, but shares its setting with the rest of Tolkien's legendarium and leads into the events of The Lord of the Rings.
- The Lord of the Rings
series13 books1954
part of Tolkien's legendarium
similar by+1 more
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
- His Dark Materials
series8 books1995
part of His Dark Materials Universe
similar byfantasyyoung adult
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.
- Piratica
series3 books2004
completed
similar byfantasyyoung adult+1 more
The Piratica Series is a series of young adult fantasy novels by Tanith Lee.
- Legends & Lattes
series9 books2022
similar byfound familyfantasylighthearted
Travis Baldree's cozy fantasy series follows Viv, a battle-worn orc mercenary who trades her sword for an apron to open the first coffeehouse in the city of Thune, winning over skeptical customers and a rival guild alike. Bookshops & Bonedust returns to her mercenary days as a prequel, and the series has become a byword for low-stakes fantasy built on found family rather than warfare.
- Cerulean Chronicles
series2 books2020
similar byfound familyfantasy+1 more
TJ Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea follows Linus Baker, a caseworker for a bureaucratic agency overseeing magical children, sent to investigate an orphanage whose six unusual residents, including the literal antichrist, complicate his usual detachment. Somewhere Beyond the Sea shifts to a new protagonist connected to the same island and its found family. Both books use a gentle, whimsical tone to work through themes of institutional prejudice and belonging.
- His Dark Materials Universe
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
similar byfantasyyoung adult
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses
series6 books2015
similar byfantasy+1 more
A Court of Thorns and Roses is a fantasy romance series by American author Sarah J. Maas, which follows the journey of 19-year-old Feyre Archeron after she is brought into the faerie lands of Prythian. The first book of the series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, was published in May 2015. The series centers on Feyre's adventures across Prythian and the faerie courts, following the epic love story and fierce struggle that ensues after she enters the fae lands. The series has sold over 13 million copies. There are currently five novels in the series, with the sixth scheduled to release on October 27, 2026, and the seventh on January 12, 2027. An eighth installment is set to conclude the continuous story told across books six, seven and eight.
- So This Is Ever After
F. T. Lukensstandalone novel2022
similar byfound familyfantasylightheartedyoung adult
Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next. As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing. With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life—starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.
- Karou
series4 books2011
similar byfantasyyoung adult
Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a young-adult fantasy book series written by Laini Taylor and published by Hachette Book Group, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. It is a complete trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone being published on 27 September 2011 in the United States; Days of Blood and Starlight on 6 November 2012 in the United States; and the third book Dreams of Gods and Monsters on April 1, 2014. The books have been published in a variety of different languages.
- Stephen King multiverse
universe46 books1967
Start hereThe Gunslinger · Start here
similar by+1 more
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. So begins the long walk of Roland Deschain, last of an order of knight-errant pistoleers, across a land that has "moved on" — where the compass points drift, dead machines rot toward sentience, and the weave of what's real wears thin. His quest is the Dark Tower itself: a spire standing at the hub of every world that exists, the linchpin that holds all of them back from ruin. Roland's road runs eight volumes, from The Gunslinger through the closing Dark Tower, with the later, interleaved tale The Wind Through the Keyhole folding a story-within-a-story back into his youth. Along the way he draws a ka-tet — a fellowship bound by fate, not choosing — through doorways between worlds: a heroin-shackled New Yorker, a woman of two minds, a boy who dies twice. The Tower is also the secret axle around which the wider shelf of King's work turns; threads from The Stand, 'Salem's Lot and beyond wind quietly toward it. Expect a mongrel of Western, high fantasy, horror and decayed science fiction, told in a dusty, incantatory dialect all its own — ka, thankee-sai, the world that has moved on. This is King at his most mythic and most personal, a decades-spanning circle that rewards a patient reader. Begin at the beginning: The Gunslinger, then walk forward in publication order. There are other worlds than these — but this door opens first.
- Watership Down
series21 books1972
completed
similar byfound familyfantasy
Watership Down is Richard Adams's 1972 novel following a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their warren and cross the English countryside of Hampshire in search of a new home, developing over the journey a full rabbit culture of language, proverbs, and mythology. Adams returned to the same world in 1996 with Tales from Watership Down, a collection of nineteen short stories mixing rabbit folklore with further adventures of characters from the novel.
- The Circle Opens
series4 books2000
part of Circle of Magic
similar byfantasyyoung adult
The Circle Opens is a quartet of novels written by Tamora Pierce and set in a pseudo-medieval/renaissance era. It mainly revolves around four teenage mages, each specializing in a different kind of magic, as they find that they are forced to deal with mages whose powers are similarly unusual to their own. The series consists of the books Magic Steps (2000), Street Magic (2001), Cold Fire (2002), and Shatterglass (2003). The Circle Opens Quartet is the sequel quartet to The Circle Of Magic Quartet, and is followed by "Battle Magic" and The Will of the Empress.
- Six of Crows
series3 books2015
part of Grishaverse
similar byfound familyfantasyyoung adult
Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology (2015-2016) follows a crew of six criminal teenagers in Ketterdam, a city modeled on the Dutch Republic, as they pull off a near-impossible heist and then deal with its fallout. Told from multiple points of view, the books lean on the found-family bond between the crew members as much as the caper plotting, and sit within Bardugo's wider Grishaverse alongside her Shadow and Bone books.
- Catwings
series7 books1988
completed
similar byfantasylighthearted+1 more
Catwings is a series of four American children's picture books written by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by S. D. Schindler, and originally published by Scholastic from 1988 to 1999. It follows the adventures of kittens who were born with wings. Catwings is also the title of the first book in the series. The series is in print from Scholastic as of August 2015.
- Monster Mission
Eva Ibbotsonstandalone novel1999
similar byfantasylightheartedwhimsical+2 more
Monster Mission is a children's book written by Eva Ibbotson. It was also published under the title Island of the Aunts. It was a Publishers Weekly bestseller and a School Library Journal Best Book of 2000.
- The Ogress and the Orphans
Kelly Barnhillstandalone novel2022
similar byfound familyfantasy+2 more
The Ogress and the Orphans is a children's book by American writer Kelly Barnhill and published on March 8, 2022, by Algonquin Books. It counts the events of a small fictional town, which loses its charm after the library is burned down and an orphan goes missing, leading to its citizen becoming less welcoming and more suspicious of one another, eventually blaming an ogress who had just moved in.
- The Borrowers
series8 books1952
similar byfantasy
The Borrowers imagines a family of tiny people living secretly beneath the floorboards of an English house, surviving by borrowing pins, stamps, and other small items from the human beans upstairs without ever being seen. Mary Norton's original 1952 novel and its sequels follow the family through discovery, flight, and resettlement across the following decades. Later editions and omnibus volumes gather the novels together, sometimes crediting other writers for introductions or companion material rather than new story content.
