The wider fantasy shelf: epic quests and fallen empires, grimdark cities, retold myths, quiet cosy stories and the odd talking animal. 685 books so far, across 241 series, plus 223 titles with no series listed. This is page 11 of the shelf.
Search by title or author, filter with the subgenre chips, the primary-genre chips or the tag chips, or sort the list. Filtering happens in your browser and nothing about the visit is stored.
Showing 48 of 685 books
No books match those filters. Try a shorter name, or pick another subgenre.
Results below cover the whole catalogue, not just this page. Use the page links to browse everything in order.
Rating coming soonTaran goes looking for the truth about where he came from, because he wants to know whether he has any right to ask Eilonwy to marry him. He travels through the country with Gurgi and meets craftsmen, farmers and thieves, and finds that most of them have a better idea of who he is than he does. There is no war to win in this book.
Rating coming soonAnidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, who is called Ani, was going to be the queen of Kildenree, and then her father died and she was sent to Bayern to marry a prince she has never met. On the journey her lady-in-waiting turns on her and takes her place, and most of the guards go along with it. Ani's only advantage is that she can speak to animals.
Rating coming soonAza is the adopted daughter of innkeepers in Ayortha, a kingdom with a narrow idea of beauty that she does not fit: she is large, milk-white in colouring, and her hair looks frying-pan black to humans although gnomes see it as the dark purple they call htun. What Ayortha admires in her is her voice, which can mimic anyone and throw itself without her moving her mouth, and the new queen hears it at the royal wedding.
Rating coming soonKahlen belongs to a sisterhood of sirens, and the same speech has been given to every girl who joins it: she must never do anything that might expose the secret, she cannot form close bonds with humans because she is deadly to them, and she pays for her eventual freedom with obedience and time. She has kept those rules for years, and then Akinli, a human, enters her world.
Rating coming soonAgatha and Sophie have returned to the village of Gavaldon as heroes, and their escape from the School for Good and Evil is being celebrated as the end of a curse. Agatha secretly wishes her story had finished differently, and the wish reopens the gates to a school that has changed: witches and princesses now share the School for Girls, while Tedros and the boys camp in the towers that used to belong to Evil.
Rating coming soonAfter her father dies, Ash is left at the mercy of a cruel stepmother and works as a servant in the house that used to be hers, and her only comfort is rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her by the fire. She meets the dark fairy Sidhean and believes he might take her away, and then she meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, and begins to want something else.
Rating coming soonPlatform 13 at King's Cross has been closed for years, and every attempt to change it fails for reasons nobody explains, because it hides a gump: an opening that appears once every nine years for nine days and leads to the Island, where magical and ordinary creatures live side by side. During the last opening the infant prince was stolen, and now a rescue party is being put together.
Rating coming soonMiryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is a poor one: free with loans and reluctant to collect them, he has left the family close to poverty. She takes the work over, hardens her heart and gains a reputation for turning silver into gold. Then a boast reaches the cold creatures who haunt the wood, and they bring her silver they expect back as gold.
Rating coming soonTwo years after The Princess and the Goblin, Curdie the miner's son has grown old enough to hunt for pleasure and has begun to doubt the story Princess Irene told him about her great-great-grandmother. Then he shoots a white pigeon, remembers whose bird it must be, and is led by a light to the old Princess, who burns his hands clean in her fire of roses.
Rating coming soonPrincess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne of Phantasmorania is given the fairy gift of ordinariness at her christening, so unlike her six beautiful sisters she grows up with mousy hair and freckles and would rather have adventures than embroider tapestries. When her parents try to marry her off, she runs away and becomes fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighbouring palace.
Rating coming soonAlice Sun is the only scholarship student at an elite international boarding school in Beijing and has always felt invisible among her rich and influential classmates. Then she starts turning invisible, uncontrollably and for real, and when her parents tell her they can no longer afford the tuition she works out how to sell the condition, discovering the secrets her classmates will pay to know.
Rating coming soonA year has passed since an unlikely alliance saved the Tressian Republic from fire and darkness at great cost. Thousands died, and Viktor Akadra, the Republic's champion, has disappeared. The ruling council struggles to mend old wounds while other factions sense opportunity: the Parliament of Crows schemes in the shadows, and to the east the Hadari Emperor gathers his armies.
Rating coming soonDrizzt Do'Urden sets out to destroy the evil Crystal Shard at last and looks for the scholar-priest Cadderly to help him do it. Instead his worst fears come true: Crenshinibon falls into the hands of the dark elf mercenary Jarlaxle and his unlikely ally Artemis Entreri, and the weapon Drizzt wanted unmade is loose in the world again.
Rating coming soonIn the kingdom of Geall, the scholarly Moira has taken up the sword of her people and, as queen, has to prepare them for the greatest battle they will ever fight. Lilith, the most powerful vampire in the world, has followed the circle of six through time to Geall, and vampires killed Moira's mother, so she has a personal account to settle as well.
Rating coming soonAlexia Tarabotti has several social problems: she has no soul, she is a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead, and she has just been attacked by a vampire, which breaks every standard of etiquette. Then she kills the vampire by accident and Lord Maccon, a loud and untidy werewolf, is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
Rating coming soonRachel Morgan is a witch and an independent bounty hunter, and she spends her nights in downtown Cincinnati among the creatures of the night. She can handle the leather-clad vampires and tangle with a demon or two, but a serial killer who feeds on the experts in the most dangerous kind of black magic is pressing the limits.
Rating coming soonAeriel is kidnapped by the Darkangel and carried up into his dozens of black wings to his distant keep, where she is to serve his brides: thirteen pitiful creatures who were each beautiful once, before he drained away their souls. Aeriel would free them, but she is one of his captives herself.
Rating coming soonIona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance, and from her maternal grandmother she learned where to find both: County Mayo in Ireland. She arrives with nothing but her grandmother's directions, an unfailingly optimistic attitude and an innate talent with horses. Her grandmother told her that County Mayo was where she would find what she had been craving all her life.
Rating coming soonIn a faraway kingdom a king has been betrayed, and the hurt and anger have made him vow never to be deceived again. His plan to protect himself endangers every young woman in the realm, unless one of them volunteers to marry him and surrender her life for it. The volunteer is the daughter of a storyteller, and telling stories is the only defence she has.
Rating coming soonHarry Dresden, Chicago's preeminent wizard, is coping with his new roommate, his vampire half-brother Thomas, when a bigger problem arrives. One of his vampire foes summons him and threatens his friend, the police lieutenant Karrin Murphy, unless he finds the Word of Kemmler. If he does not produce it within three days, his friend will be framed for a murder she did not commit.
Rating coming soonJohn Peerybingle is a slow but honest carrier, and he lives with his young wife Dot, their baby boy and their nanny, Tilly Slowboy. A cricket chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family, and then a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit and takes up lodging in the house.
Rating coming soonPrincess Rose and her eleven sisters are bound by a curse that carries them out of the palace every third night to dance in the kingdom of the King Under Stone, and forbids them to speak of it. Twelve princes have tried to learn the secret, and none has survived. Galen, a soldier's son home from the war, takes work in the king's gardens and is warned by an old woman that he will need the cloak and yarn she gives him.
Rating coming soonDaystar has grown up at the edge of the Enchanted Forest with his mother Cimorene, who has taught him swordwork and spells but never told him who his father is, though she has raised him on legends of the forest. When the wizard Antorell attacks them, Cimorene melts him with a spell and sends the boy into the forest with a sword, a talking lizard and orders not to come back until he can say why he had to leave.
Rating coming soonA merchant loses his fortune with his ships at sea and takes his three daughters to Rose Cottage, a country house that was left to his youngest, Beauty, and so cannot be seized by his creditors. The garden turns out to be full of roses, and a single rose picked at a strange castle brings the anger of its owner down on the family.
Rating coming soonOn the princess's name-day the fairy Pernicia lays a curse on the baby: that she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall into a poisoned sleep. That same day a young fairy, Katriona, carries the child away and hides her in a village, where she grows up as an ordinary girl called Rosie with no idea who she is.
Rating coming soonAs a small girl Dakin announced that she meant to travel to the Farthest-Away Mountain, meet a gargoyle and marry a prince. Two days before her fifteenth birthday she hears the mountain call to her in a dream and sees it nod, and leaves her valley for a place nobody she knows has ever reached, where a magician's son rules and a frog keeps watch.
Rating coming soonAt the Stahlbaum house on Christmas Eve, Marie is drawn to an ugly nutcracker, and when her brother cracks a nut too hard and breaks its jaw she bandages the toy with a ribbon from her dress. That night the toys in the cabinet come to life and fight a battle against the Mouse King's army.
Rating coming soonOut on the Yorkshire Moors lives a family of book eaters, people who feed on books and keep everything they have read. Devon, a daughter of the clan, is raised on fairy tales and cautionary stories while her brothers are given tales of valour, and she has to decide how far she will go to feed her son, who was born hungry for human minds.
Rating coming soonBriseis can grow plants from seed to full bloom with a single touch, and her parents have spent years keeping her and her gift hidden. When an aunt she never met dies and leaves her a run-down estate in rural New York, the family goes there hoping the garden will teach Bri control, and finds a walled garden of deadly plants, a set of instructions and generations of family secrets.
Rating coming soonA woman with tangled hair and no memory of how she came to be there is locked in a hospital in the Old City, sure only of a tea party long ago, long ears and blood. A fire gives her a chance to escape, and she sets out to learn what was done to her years before, pursued by something powerful that left the hospital with her.
Rating coming soonPersephone was not carried off to the underworld: she jumped, refusing to be married to a god more in love with himself than with her. Now she has to talk the Underworld's arrogant ruler, Hades, into going along with a plan that will shake Mount Olympus, and to survive the politics of the gods who told the original lie about her.
Rating coming soonTea, a bone witch who can raise the dead and take life in return, has ended her exile and set her heart on revenge against the royals who took the person she loved. With the daeva, the terrible creatures she can command, she has what she needs to act, but other powers want her magic for themselves and war is gathering between the kingdoms.
Rating coming soonThree women come to a summerhouse in Maine where Madame Zoya grants her visitors their innermost wishes. Amy hides a loss behind a perfect marriage, Faith is a widow still grieving a man from long ago, and Zoe is an artist shunned by her town after a night she cannot remember. Zoya and her sister intend to send them back to eighteenth-century England, to alter Amy's ancestry.
Rating coming soonStolen from her home as a child and tormented for centuries, Elisabeta Trigovise has been rescued and is safe inside the Carpathian compound, but she has lived in fear so long that she does not know how to live without it. Ferro Arany, an ancient warrior whose senses have come alive, wants to convince her that they are partners rather than master and prisoner, while the vampire who held her captive wants her back.
Rating coming soonTwo children who hold a book of fairy tales are transported into the land the stories come from, where they find Red Riding Hood grown into a snippy warrior, the Frog Prince in hiding, and Snow White pregnant and ruling a troubled kingdom. To get home they have to travel between the territories to reach the Wishing Spell.
Rating coming soonTwelve-year-old David is grieving for his mother in an attic bedroom when the books on his shelf begin to whisper to him in the dark. His family is coming apart around him, and his refuge in stories takes him into another world, a distorted version of his own ruled by a king who keeps his secrets in a book called The Book of Lost Things.
Rating coming soonEvalle has two days to keep a promise that gives an entire race its freedom, and demonic Svart Trolls have just invaded Atlanta. To stop the gang wars they are leading she has to ask for help from Isak Nyght, a Black Ops specialist who recently had her in his sights, and in doing so she exposes a secret that endangers everything she cares about.
Rating coming soonStile lives in two worlds at once. On Proton he is a serf who has to compete in the Great Games to prove he deserves to exist, and on Phaze, where only magic works, he is the Blue Adept learning sorcery. In both worlds somebody is trying to kill him, and he also has to win Lady Blue and find the ultimate weapon.
Rating coming soonMercy Thompson, a mechanic and shapeshifter, tries to return a powerful Fae book she borrowed in desperation and finds the bookshop locked and closed. The book contains knowledge the Fae will do a great deal to keep hidden, and at the same time her friend Samuel is struggling with his wolf side, leaving Mercy to cover for him.
Rating coming soonInspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad in Besźel investigates the murder of a foreign student found dead in the street with her face disfigured. His inquiries lead him towards Ul Qoma, the city that shares his city's ground, and towards the quarrel between two places whose citizens are forbidden to acknowledge each other.
Rating coming soonKarou has learned that she is Madrigal, a chimaera killed for loving the seraph Akiva and resurrected in human form, and she has left Earth for the land of Eretz. There she takes up the work of her murdered adoptive father, using the art of resurrection to rebuild the chimaera army, while blaming Akiva for everything that has happened.
Rating coming soonCasiopea Tun is eighteen, lives as an unwanted poor relation in her wealthy grandfather's house in the Yucatán and dreams of escape. In a forbidden chest in his bedroom she finds the bones of the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé, and when a shard of bone pierces her thumb he returns to a semblance of life and binds himself to her.
Rating coming soonIn the winter of 1953, twenty-year-old Boy Novak runs away from her father in New York and arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking for beauty and the opposite of the life she has left behind. She marries a local widower with a daughter called Snow and becomes a stepmother in a family with a secret.
Rating coming soonOjo the Unlucky lives in poverty in the woods of the Munchkin Country with his laconic uncle, Unc Nunkie, and their neighbour is the magician Dr Pipt, who is about to finish six years of work on the Powder of Life. The powder animates the Patchwork Girl, and an accident leaves Ojo needing to find the ingredients for a cure.
Rating coming soonHoyt Mac Cionaoith is a sorcerer who stands on a cliff above a raging sea and rails at the vampire who has taken his twin brother from the family. Her name is Lilith, she has existed for more than a thousand years, and she will not stop until she rules over everything, so Hoyt is enlisted into a battle for humanity.
Rating coming soonNevada Baylor is handed the most dangerous case of her career as a private investigator: bringing in a suspect who can set anyone and anything on fire. Before she can decide whether she is capable of it, she is kidnapped by Connor Rogan, a billionaire with powers as destructive as the target's, and the two of them have to work together.
Rating coming soonMiranda Ellis has been tormented since birth by a strange and powerful gift she has spent her whole life trying to control. One innocent but irreversible mistake has destroyed her family's fortune and forced her to marry London's most notorious nobleman, a man who hides his disfigured face behind masks and who stands accused of a series of gruesome murders.
Rating coming soonAt Ever After High the students are expected to pledge on Legacy Day that they will follow in their fairy-tale parents' footsteps, and Raven Queen, the daughter of the Evil Queen, refuses to sign the Storybook of Legends. Her refusal puts everyone else's future in question and splits the school into Royals and Rebels.
Fantasy here is the whole shelf, not one flavour of it. Epic and high fantasy sit next to grimdark, historical fantasy, myth and fairy-tale retellings, portal stories, urban fantasy and cosy books where the stakes are a shop, a tea menu and a found family.
A book lands here when the fantastic is the point of the story rather than the wallpaper. Romance can be part of it, and the books tagged romantasy sit on this shelf as well as on romance, but a book does not need a love story to qualify.
Tags are cross-cutting markers, not genres. They have their own landing pages.
The love story is the plot: fantasy courts, dragon academies and modern cities all count.
676 booksPrimary genreGeneration ships, dying empires, robots with opinions and one very unlucky astronaut.
536 booksPrimary genreHaunted houses, old vampires, cosmic dread and the odd very bad week.
381 booksPrimary genreDetectives, spies, locked rooms and the people who lie to the police.
599 booksPrimary genreCathedrals, courts, trenches and revolutions, all of it set in a past that is doing the work.
580 booksPrimary genreNovels where the prose carries the book: families, cities, memory and the modern self.
575 booksPrimary genreShipwrecks, expeditions, chases, frontiers and people who should have turned back.
324 books