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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

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anchored on:psychic powersgrief and lossour worldcontemporaryemotionalparanormal+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 about minds with paranormal abilities — telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, empathy — and how societies handle those who have them.
  • 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 Time Traveler's Wife
                  The Time Traveler's Wife

                  Audrey Niffenegger · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryemotionalromancegrief and lossforbidden love

                  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 Siren
                  The Siren

                  Kiera Cass · standalone novel · 2009

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                  "You must never do anything that might expose our secret. This means that, in general, you cannot form close bonds with humans. You can speak to us, and you can always commune with the Ocean, but you are deadly to humans. You are, essentially, a weapon. A very beautiful weapon. I won't lie to you, it can be a lonely existence, but once you are done, you get to live. All you have to give, for now, is obedience and time..." The same speech has been given hundreds of times to hundreds of beautiful girls who enter the sisterhood of sirens. Kahlen has lived by these rules for years now, patiently waiting for the life she can call her own. But when Akinli, a human, enters her world, she can't bring herself to live by the rules anymore. Suddenly the life she's been waiting for doesn't seem nearly as important as the one she's living now.

                • Cover of When
                  When

                  series · 2 books · 2015

                  similar bycontemporaryparanormalpsychic powers+7 more

                • Cover of Shark Heart
                  Shark Heart

                  Emily Habeck · standalone novel · 2023

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                  Subtitled "A Love Story"

                • Cover of Fluke
                  Fluke

                  James Herbert · standalone novel · 1977

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                  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 The Seven Year Slip
                  The Seven Year Slip

                  Ashley Poston · standalone novel · 2023

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                  Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it. And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again. Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future. Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed. After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

                • Cover of ... from Hell (young adult)
                  ... from Hell (young adult)

                  series · 1 book · 2008

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                • Cover of The Gargoyle
                  The Gargoyle

                  Andrew Davidson · standalone novel · 2008

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                  The Gargoyle is the debut novel by Andrew Davidson. It was published in 2008.

                • Cover of Teardrop Trilogy
                  Teardrop Trilogy

                  series · 2 books · 2013

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                • Cover of Shifting Circle
                  Shifting Circle

                  series · 3 books · 2012

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                • Cover of The Midnight Club
                  The Midnight Club

                  Christopher Pike · standalone novel · 1994

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                  When you think Christopher Pike, you probably think ax murderers, cursed chain letters, and the occasional evil lizard person — and with good reason! But in this sensitive novel, set at a hospice for terminally ill teens, Pike mashes up standard scary stories with an exploration of what fear really means when illness is more of a threat than haunted houses or sexy vampires.

                • Cover of Diagnosis: Attraction
                  Diagnosis: Attraction

                  Rebecca York · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryparanormalromanceemotionalpsychic powers

                  "Dr. Matt Delano's life is turned upside down by his intense connection to a beautiful amnesiac in Rebecca York's latest Mindbenders story. No medical test could ever detect what Dr. Matt Delano experiences while taking the pulse of his beautiful amnesia patient. For a few shocking moments, he feels more deeply connected to Elizabeth Forester than he thought humanly possible. And to his dismay, a scorching sexual heat flares between them. As a professional, the handsome doctor tries to stay away from Elizabeth, but finds it impossible. He'll risk his life to help her regain her memory and discover who's trying to kill her - and why. Only then can he try to solve the more baffling mystery of their powerful bond: What's turned two loners into passionate soul mates?"--Publisher description.

                • Cover of Every Day
                  Every Day

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryemotionalromance

                  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 Unmaking of June Farrow
                  The Unmaking of June Farrow

                  Adrienne Young · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryromanceemotionalforbidden love+1 more

                  In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors. It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own. After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’sdecades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

                • Cover of My Name Is Memory
                  My Name Is Memory

                  Ann Brashares · standalone novel · 2010

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                  My Name is Memory is a novel written in 2010 by Ann Brashares, author of the best-selling young adult series The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The novel is centered on a mysterious young boy named Daniel, and Sophia, the girl he has spent lifetimes searching for; as he races against time to spur her lost memories of him before his vengeful, centuries-old brother Joaquim finds them. The story has been optioned for film.

                • Cover of Electric Angel
                  Electric Angel

                  Sue Dent · standalone novel · 2011

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                  Because of her cancer, Anna Chadwick wouldn't live long enough to carry her twin infants to term. Yet she wanted nothing more than for them to have a chance at living. Learning one would be stillborn didn't lessen her desire. It would take a miracle....so she prayed for one. When an electrical entity arrives to take the place of her stillborn, some would reflect that prayers aren't always answered the way we'd expect them to be.

                • Cover of One Last Stop
                  One Last Stop

                  Casey McQuiston · standalone novel · 2021

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                  One Last Stop is a 2021 LGBTQ romance novel written by American author Casey McQuiston. The novel is about a woman named August Landry, a cynical pseudo detective, who finds love in a woman named Jane Su she meets on a subway, a punk butch lesbian from the 1970s who has been misplaced in time and is trapped on the subway.

                • Cover of Vicky Angel
                  Vicky Angel

                  Jacqueline Wilson · standalone novel · 2001

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                  Vicky Angel is a children's book by Jacqueline Wilson, about a young girl's struggle with her grief over losing her best friend, Vicky. It was first published in 2000.

                • Cover of The Wolves of Mercy Falls
                  The Wolves of Mercy Falls

                  series · 4 books · 2009

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                  The Wolves of Mercy Falls is a series of four novels, located in the genres of romance, fantasy and young adult (YA) fiction, written by Maggie Stiefvater. Published by American multinational company Scholastic from between 2009 and 2014, the series consists of the titles Shiver, Linger, Forever and Sinner. Set in the fictional town of Mercy Falls, Stiefvater has stated that the real town of Ely in Minnesota would be its closest neighbouring destination, with the two towns sharing a similar climate.

                • Cover of One Little Spell
                  One Little Spell

                  D. L. Richardson · standalone novel · 2013

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                  " Ruby Parker is a singer in an all-girl band. When she dies in a car crash and returns as a ghost, she uses magic to be with her boyfriend. Everyone except Ruby knows that magic comes with a price. Magic is meant to fix her problems, instead it's making things worse." ― quoted from this book's product page on the Amazon.com website as of 2019-01-01.

                • Cover of Hereafter
                  Hereafter

                  series · 3 books · 2011

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                • Cover of Flowers for Algernon
                  Flowers for Algernon

                  Daniel Keyes · standalone novel · 1966

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                  A man with a low IQ becomes the subject of an experimental medical procedure which raises his IQ well over genius level.

                • Cover of Crosstalk
                  Crosstalk

                  Connie Willis · standalone novel · 2016

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                  Crosstalk is a science fiction novel by Connie Willis, published in 2016. It is a romantic comedy that explores the intersection of telephones and telepathy. In a similar situation to Bellwether and Passage, the main character, Briddey Flannigan, is part of a larger institution who gets caught up in series of escalating events. Additionally, Crosstalk like Bellwether and Passage feature themes of neuroscience, communication and technology.

                • Cover of Pretty Dead
                  Pretty Dead

                  Francesca Lia Block · standalone novel · 2009

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                  Charlotte lives in a beautiful mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She's surrounded by old, beautiful things, and old, beautiful clothing, but Charlotte lives in it alone, the object of envy. People think her parents are always vacationing in Europe. They think she has the perfect life. But she's so lonely. And she's been dead for almost a century.But when the horrifying death of her best friend, a new romance and her first love suddenly converge, Charlotte becomes the subject of a dark bargain that might give her the only thing she's ever coveted-the chance to be human again.