Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

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

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Trinity

anchored on:early 20th centuryour worldemotional

but

Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

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

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of The Ten Thousand Doors of January
                  The Ten Thousand Doors of January

                  Alix E. Harrow · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a 2019 fantasy novel by Alix E. Harrow. It is the Hugo Award-nominated writer's debut novel.

                • Cover of Chime
                  Chime

                  Franny Billingsley · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  In the early twentieth century in Swampsea, seventeen-year-old Briony, who can see the spirits that haunt the marshes around their town, feels responsible for her twin sister's horrible injury until a young man enters their lives and exposes secrets that even Briony does not know about.

                • Cover of Volk
                  Volk

                  Piers Anthony · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  Set During World War II, Volk is the story of friendship that transcends politics and war. Lane is an American fighter pilot; Quality, an American pacifist Quaker; and Ernst, a Nazi.

                • Cover of Bright's Passage
                  Bright's Passage

                  Josh Ritter · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  Bright's Passage is the debut novel by singer/songwriter Josh Ritter. It is published by Dial Press and was released June 28, 2011. The first chapter had been previously released for free download on Ritter's official website.

                • Cover of The Storm Dog
                  The Storm Dog

                  Holly Webb · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  Tilly is going to stay with her gran and great-gran in Wales. She's got a big school project about the Second World War to do and Gran, who was evacuated herself during the war, has promised to help. Travelling on the train for the first time alone, Tilly falls asleep and wakes up to discover she's travelled all the way back to World War II. She's being evacuated to Wales with her two younger brothers. Stern Mr Edwards offers to give them a home on his remote farm, where she meets a very special sheepdog.

                • Cover of The Time Traveler's Wife
                  The Time Traveler's Wife

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  The Time Traveler's Wife is the debut novel by American author Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003. It is a love story about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about Clare, his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences. Niffenegger, who was frustrated with love when she began the novel, wrote the story as a metaphor for her failed relationships. The tale's central relationship came to Niffenegger suddenly and subsequently supplied the novel's title. The novel has been classified as both science fiction and romance.

                • Cover of The Dreaming Jewels
                  The Dreaming Jewels

                  Theodore Sturgeon · standalone novel · 1950

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  The Dreaming Jewels (1950), also known as The Synthetic Man, is a science fiction novel by American writer Theodore Sturgeon. It was his first published novel.

                • Cover of Passage
                  Passage

                  Connie Willis · standalone novel · 2001

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  Passage is a science fiction novel by Connie Willis, published in 2001. The novel won the Locus Award for Best Novel in 2002, was shortlisted for the Nebula Award in 2001, and received nominations for the Hugo, Campbell, and Clarke Awards in 2002.

                • Cover of Fluke
                  Fluke

                  James Herbert · standalone novel · 1977

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  A dog named Fluke is barely more than a puppy when fragments of a life that isn't his own surface in his mind -- memories of a wife, a daughter, a job, an entire human existence he can't reconcile with the body he's now living in. Driven by those memories, Fluke sets out to find the family he half-remembers, aided by Rumbo, another dog going through the same impossible transformation. James Herbert follows the journey from a dog's-eye view of the world, using Fluke's confusion and determination to ask what, if anything, survives of a person after death. A standalone novel by James Herbert, better known for straightforward horror.

                • Cover of No Enemy But Time
                  No Enemy But Time

                  Michael Bishop · standalone novel · 1982

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  No Enemy But Time is a 1982 science fiction novel by Michael Bishop. It won the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was also nominated for the 1983 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. It was included in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.

                • Cover of The Host
                  The Host

                  Stephenie Meyer · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. But Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves--Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.--From publisher description.

                • Cover of The Speed of Dark
                  The Speed of Dark

                  Elizabeth Moon · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  From the Penguin Random House website In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past. Most genetic defects will be removed at birth; the remaining during infancy. Lou Arrendale, a high-functioning autistic adult, is a member of the lost generation, born at the wrong time to reap the rewards of medical science. He lives a low-key, independent life. But then he is offered a chance to try a brand-new experimental "cure" for his condition. With this treatment Lou would think and act and be just like everyone else. But if he was suddenly free of autism, would he still be himself? Would he still love the same classical music — with its complications and resolutions? Would he still see the same colors and patterns in the world—shades and hues that others cannot see? Most important, would he still love Marjory, a woman who may never be able to reciprocate his feelings? Now Lou must decide if he should submit to a surgery that might completely change the way he views the world ... and the very essence of who he is.

                • Cover of The Book Thief
                  The Book Thief

                  Markus Zusak · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byemotionalearly 20th century

                  The Book Thief is a historical fiction novel by the Australian author Markus Zusak, set in Nazi Germany during World War II. Published in 2005, The Book Thief became an international bestseller and was translated into 63 languages and sold 17 million copies. It was adapted into the 2013 feature film, The Book Thief.

                • Cover of The Humans
                  The Humans

                  Matt Haig · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  When an extraterrestrial arrives on Earth, his first impressions of humans are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete his task and hurry back to his own utopian planet. Disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, he is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to reconsider.

                • Cover of The Lost Art of Letter Writing
                  The Lost Art of Letter Writing

                  Menna van Praag · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar byemotionalour worldearly 20th century

                  "In a forgotten nook of Cambridge a little shop stands where thousands of sheets of beautiful paper and hundreds of exquisite pens wait for the next person who, with Clara Cohen's help, will express the love, despair and desire they feel to correspondents alive, estranged or dead. Clara knows better than most the power a letter can have to turn a person's life around, so when she discovers a cache of wartime love letters, she follows them on the start of on a profound journey of her own."-- Provided by publisher.

                • Cover of Enchantment
                  Enchantment

                  Orson Scott Card · standalone novel · 1999

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  Enchantment is an English language fantasy novel by American writer Orson Scott Card. First published in 1999, the novel is based on the Ukrainian version of Sleeping Beauty and other folk tales. Various forms of magic, potions, and immortal deities also play an important role in the story.

                • Cover of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
                  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

                  Kate DiCamillo · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is a 2006 children's novel by American author Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Following the life of a china rabbit, the book won the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in the Fiction category. Scholarly readings of this novel have examined the work from the lens of spirituality and Christian religious studies, human development, and clinical psychology.

                • Cover of Fallen
                  Fallen

                  series · 7 books · 2009

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  Lauren Kate's Fallen opens with Luce Price, sent to a reform school in Savannah after a fire she can't explain, where she meets Daniel, a boy she is certain she has met before. The series follows Luce's growing entanglement with fallen angels and a curse of repeated lifetimes across several sequels running through 2015.

                • Cover of Every Day
                  Every Day

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  David Levithan's Every Day follows A, a consciousness with no fixed body who wakes each morning inside a different person's life, and who falls for a girl named Rhiannon despite the impossibility of ever staying in one body to be with her. The story continues from other perspectives in Another Day and, years later, Someday.

                • Cover of The Devil's Arithmetic
                  The Devil's Arithmetic

                  Jane Yolen · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar byemotionalearly 20th century

                  Hannah resents the traditions of her Jewish heritage until time travel places her in the middle of a small Jewish village in Nazi-occupied Poland.

                • Cover of Eva
                  Eva

                  Peter Dickinson · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  From the back cover: "Thirteen-year-old Eva wakes up in the hospital unable to remember anything since the picnic on the beach. Her mother leans over the bed and begins to explain. A traffic accident, a long coma... But there is something, Eva senses, she is not being told, some other price she must pay to be alive at all. What have they done, with their amazing medical technology, to save her?"

                • Cover of The Man
                  The Man

                  Bram Stoker · standalone novel · 1905

                  similar byemotionalearly 20th century

                  The Man is a 1905 Edwardian novel by Bram Stoker. A Gothic novel, it features both horror and romance. The Man has also been published as The Gates of Life. It was released eight years after Dracula.

                • Cover of Godbody
                  Godbody

                  Theodore Sturgeon · standalone novel · 1986

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  Godbody is a science fiction novel by American writer Theodore Sturgeon, published posthumously in 1986. A foreword, "Agape and Eros: The Art of Theodore Sturgeon", was contributed by Robert A. Heinlein and an afterword was contributed by Stephen R. Donaldson.

                • Cover of Silver Metal Lover
                  Silver Metal Lover

                  series · 2 books · 1981

                  completed

                  similar byemotionalour world

                  The S.I.L.V.E.R. series is a fantasy novel series by Tanith Lee. The Silver Metal Lover, published in 1981, is the first in the series. Metallic Love, published in 2005, is the second novel.