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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 Touching Evil

anchored on:thriller & suspensepsychic powersnorth americacontemporarytenseparanormal+4 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 Hideaway
                  Hideaway

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensemurder investigationthriller & suspensepsychological thrillernorth america

                  After being resuscitated from clinical death, a man finds himself telepathically linked with a psychopathic serial murderer who has also been resuscitated from clinical death; and the psychopath decides to target the man and his family.

                • Cover of Made for You
                  Made for You

                  Melissa Marr · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thriller

                  Southern small town darling Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital with the frightening ability to see through the eyes of the victims of a serial killer, and realizes that she, too, is a target of the depraved stalker.

                • Cover of Firestarter
                  Firestarter

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensenorth americathriller & suspense

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

                • Cover of 4MK Thrillers
                  4MK Thrillers

                  series · 2 books · 2017

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationnorth americathriller & suspensepsychological thrillerbig city+1 more

                • Cover of Darkness Within
                  Darkness Within

                  Steven Pajak · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensemurder investigationnorth americathriller & suspense

                  ● " Reluctant psychic Susan Moore witnessed the brutal slaying of a young boy in a vision. Despite her psychic gifts, she is unable to save the boy from a brutal ending. In a small Texas town, Sheriff Steven Ames is desperate to catch a killer before tragedy strikes again. When fate brings Ames and Moore together, the two join forces to stop the killer before tragedy strikes again. In the midst of chaos and danger Susan must come to terms with the limitations of her psychic abilities while Ames must battle his own feelings of inadequacy and deal with a town that no longer has faith in his abilities as a peace officer." ― paraphrased from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2022-08-02.

                • Cover of Misery
                  Misery

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1987

                  similar bycontemporarytensenorth americathriller & suspensepsychological thriller+1 more

                  Novelist Paul Sheldon finishes the manuscript that will finally kill off Misery Chastain, the heroine who made his career, when a snowstorm sends his car off a Colorado road. He wakes with both legs shattered, in the care of Annie Wilkes, a former nurse and 'number one fan' with no intention of taking him to a hospital. Annie manages his pain with drugs he comes to depend on, and her moods swing between doting and violent. When she learns Misery doesn't survive his new manuscript, her reaction makes clear Paul isn't just her patient, he's her hostage. A Stephen King novel about a writer at his most devoted fan's mercy.

                • Cover of Carrie
                  Carrie

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 1974

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensenorth america+1 more

                  In one way or another, everybody abused Carrie. This sixteen-year-old misfit was forbidden everything that was young and fun by her fanatical mother. She was teased and taunted by her classmates, misunderstood by her teachers, and given up as hopeless by almost everyone. But Carrie had a secret: She possessed terrifying telekinetic powers that could make inanimate objects move, a lighted candle fall, or a door lock. Carrie could make all kinds of startling bizarre, and malevolent things happen. (WorldCat)

                • Cover of Divine Evil
                  Divine Evil

                  Nora Roberts · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thriller+1 more

                  Kurzbeschreibung Dunkle Herzen (Divine Evil) - Nora Roberts Die erfolgreiche New Yorker Bildhauerin Clare Kimball wird immer wieder von einem Alptraum gequält: Auf einer einsamen Waldlichtung in der Nähe ihres Heimatortes Emmitsboro in Maryland zelebrieren maskierte Mnner orgiastisch eine schwarze Messe. Clare will endlich herausfinden, was es mit dem Traum auf sich hat. Sie kehrt zurück nach Emmitsboro, trotz der Warnungen guter Freunde. In Cameron Raffery, dem neuen Sheriff, findet Clare schnell einen Verbündeten. Aber auch er kann nicht ahnen, dass hinter der biederen Fassade der Kleinstadt Ungeheuerliches passiert - und dass Clare sich schon bald in ernster Gefahr befindet... Ein atemberaubender Psychothriller um satanische Rituale in einer amerikanischen Kleinstadt.

                • Cover of Later
                  Later

                  Stephen King · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerseerietensenorth america+3 more

                  A young boy, with the power of seeing and talking with the recently deceased, and his single mother try to avoid personal and financial disasters.

                • Cover of Finders Keepers (Stephen King)
                  Finders Keepers (Stephen King)

                  series · 7 books · 2014

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationnorth americathriller & suspense

                  The books gathered here follow Holly Gibney, who first appeared as a supporting character in Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) before graduating into her own strand of stories: a major role in The Outsider, then top billing in the novella If It Bleeds and the novels Holly and Never Flinch, where she works as a private investigator taking on cases with a supernatural edge. The mix of true-crime procedural instincts and creeping horror is a hallmark of King's later work with the character.

                • Cover of Blind
                  Blind

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensemurder investigationnorth america+4 more

                • Cover of The Shining
                  The Shining

                  series · 5 books · 1977

                  similar bycontemporarytensepsychic powersnorth america+2 more

                  Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining follows the Torrance family as winter caretakers of the isolated, malevolent Overlook Hotel, where father Jack is gradually consumed by the hotel's influence while his young son Danny's psychic "shining" draws its attention. Doctor Sleep (2013) picks up the story decades later, following Danny as an adult still marked by that childhood ordeal. Together the two form a horror duology spanning nearly forty years of real-world publication.

                • Cover of The Terminal Man
                  The Terminal Man

                  Michael Crichton · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar bycontemporarytensenorth americathriller & suspensebig citymadness

                  The Terminal Man is a novel by American writer Michael Crichton. It is his second novel under his own name, his 12th overall, and is about the dangers of mind control. It was published in April 1972 and also serialized in Playboy in March, April, and May 1972. In 1974, it was made into a film of the same name.

                • Cover of U R miNe
                  U R miNe

                  T. J. MacGregor · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bycontemporarytensepsychic powersmurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americaparanormal+1 more

                  ● "A serial killer is stalking blondes; his MO is consistent. On a new or full moon, he sends his target a letter that implies he has been watching her, and that she is his. Two weeks later, on a new or full moon, the woman becomes his "lunar kill," a sacrifice to the Roman goddess Diana. When Laurie Brautigan receives a stalker letter, she initially thinks it's a cruel joke. But Detective Nick Finley convinces her otherwise, and Laurie's life is turned inside out by terror and suspicion. What the killer doesn't know is that both Laurie and Nick possess rare secret talents. She's a psychic whose specialty is animal communication and Nick talks to the dead. They race against time to find the killer before the full moon." ― paraphrased from this book's product page on Amazon.com as of 2025-01-14.

                • Cover of Psychic Killer
                  Psychic Killer

                  series · 2 books · 2008

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                • Cover of The Wife Upstairs
                  The Wife Upstairs

                  Rachel Hawkins · standalone novel · 2021

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thriller

                  "A delicious twist on a Gothic classic, Rachel Hawkins' The Wife Upstairs pairs Southern charm with atmospheric domestic suspense, perfect for fans of B.A. Paris and Megan Miranda. Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates--a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates' most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can't help but see an opportunity in Eddie--not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she's always yearned for. Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie's heart before her past--or his--catches up to her? With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won't stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature's most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?"--

                • Cover of Fall Into Darkness
                  Fall Into Darkness

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thrillermadness

                  They said she murdered her best friend. The trial is for murder. Ann Rice is dead. Her best friend, Sharon McKay, stands accused. But there is no body. And the three witnesses to the crime only heard what happened, and did not see it. Nevertheless, the prosecution is almost certain of victory. Ann was alone in the dark with Sharon on top of the cliff when Ann fell the 500 feet into the torrential river that claimed her life. There was only one route leading to the cliff, and all the witnesses can remember hearing the girls arguing before the fall occurred. Sharon's only defense is that Ann committed suicide. But everyone who knew Ann, including Sharon, said she was not the suicidal type. And they were right. Ann was much more than suicidal. She was obsessed.

                • Cover of The Body Finder
                  The Body Finder

                  series · 5 books · 2010

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                • Cover of The Summer Man
                  The Summer Man

                  S. D. Perry · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powersmurder investigationeerietensenorth americathriller & suspense+1 more

                  "Amanda Young grew up in Port Isley, a remote seaside community perched on the outermost shores of Washington. She's watched as, each summer, the tight-knit small village braces for the invasion of vacationers seeking refuge from city life. But this year, a new kind of visitor arrives in Port Isley, bringing something most unexpected. Soon after the season begins, a teenage girl's mutilated body is found in a local park. The police declare it a random act of violence, but Amanda's not so sure ... because how can she explain that she had a premonition of the crime just hours before it happened? Or that the neighbors she's known forever inexplicably are beginning to change ... into lustful, violent shadows of themselves? Amanda knows something's not right. And she knows it has something to do with the sinister stranger who's come to town. But can she uncover his dark secret in time to stop him--and in time to save the souls of Port Isley?"--Amazon.com.

                • Cover of Nine Levels Down
                  Nine Levels Down

                  Rodman Philbrick · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thrillerbig citymadness

                  "Dr. Anna Kane has invented a tiny computer device that, once implanted in the brain of a psychopath, monitors his violent impulses and renders him unconscious before he can act. The device is first implanted in John Chester Marlon, the infamous, charismatic Subway Killer. Convicted of murdering four young women in the tunnels of New York City's subway system, Marlon is so dangerous that even hardened prison guards will not be alone with him. But John Chester Marlon is not a psychopath, not subject to murderous rages. His every act is cold, calculated, and drawn from a superior understanding of human behavior. The implant won't put Marlon to sleep. It won't even slow him down. Dr. Anna Kane is about to learn what really lurks in the mind of a killer." — quoted from the Forge mass-market paperback's back cover.

                • Cover of Chasing the Dime
                  Chasing the Dime

                  Michael Connelly · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar bycontemporarytensemurder investigationthriller & suspensenorth america+1 more

                  Chasing the Dime is a 2002 novel by American crime writer Michael Connelly. It is his twelfth novel overall, and the only one to feature protagonist Henry Pierce.

                • Cover of Very
                  Very

                  series · 2 books · 2004

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powersmurder investigationtensenorth america+1 more

                • Cover of The Mask
                  The Mask

                  Dean R. Koontz · standalone novel · 1981

                  similar bycontemporarytensethriller & suspensenorth americapsychological thrillermadness

                  The Mask is a thriller novel by American writer Dean Koontz originally released under the pseudonym Owen West in 1981. Koontz later re-released the novel under his own name.

                • Cover of The Fury
                  The Fury

                  series · 4 books · 1976

                  similar bycontemporarypsychic powerstensethriller & suspense+1 more

                  John Farris's The Fury centers on a teenage girl and boy with escalating psychic and telekinetic powers who become targets of a covert government program trying to weaponize them. The 1976 novel, adapted into Brian De Palma's 1978 film, gave rise to a string of later sequels following the same family's psychic bloodline across decades. Farris writes it as paranoid conspiracy thriller as much as horror, with the powers themselves treated as a violent, destabilizing force.