3473 books across eight primary genres: romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery and thrillers, historical fiction, literary fiction and adventure. Romantasy and contemporary romance are tags on top of those shelves rather than genres of their own. Every page gives you the author, the publication year, the series it belongs to and a short synopsis that stops before the plot turns.
Search by title or author, narrow the list by primary genre or by tag, or sort it. Every title here is a different book: no duplicate editions and no omnibus volumes. A book that genuinely belongs to two genres appears once and is listed on both.
This is page 14 of the list. The search box and the filter chips read the whole catalogue, not just this page, and the page links below walk the shelf in order.
Showing 48 of 3473 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 soonThe novel sets out the story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world, and did. It is built on a large cast of industrialists, inventors and administrators whose work is progressively withdrawn or obstructed, and on the question of what happens to a society that treats production as something it is entitled to rather than something people choose to do.
Rating coming soonOutnumbered, outsmarted and desperate, the hunters are on the run, pursued by the vampaneze, the police and an angry mob. With their enemies calling for blood, the vampires prepare for a battle they may not survive, and the question is whether this is the end for Darren and his allies. The chase is fought on three fronts at once, which is what makes the position hopeless.
Rating coming soonChicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, the twenty-two-year-old army veteran Atticus Turner sets off for New England with his uncle George, who publishes a travel guide for Black motorists, and his childhood friend Letitia. At the manor of a Mr Braithwhite they encounter the ordinary terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem to come straight out of the weird tales George reads.
Rating coming soonLeigh VanVoreen has to escape from Farthinggale Manor in Boston, where the foul secret she carries has darkened her life. Her mother Jillian will not believe her, and her stepfather Tony Tatterton has betrayed her. The devotion of Luke Casteel seems to offer hope and respect, and she prays that her dreams will finally save her from tragedy.
Rating coming soonElena Gilbert's love, the vampire Stefan Salvatore, has been captured and imprisoned by demonic spirits who are causing havoc in the town of Fell's Church. To find him she entrusts her life to Stefan's brother Damon, a deadly vampire who wants Elena body and soul, and the two of them set out for the slums of the Dark Dimension, where Stefan is being held.
Rating coming soonDarren faces a final confrontation with his archenemy Steve Leopard, and he looks for a way to trick destiny and avoid the requirement that one of them must die and the other become the Lord of the Shadows, fated to destroy the world. The oath that binds them is the problem rather than the fight.
Rating coming soonTarquin Blackwood, heir to a powerful old family in New Orleans, has been haunted all his life by a spirit called Goblin. Made a vampire in his youth, he seeks out Lestat de Lioncourt for help in ridding himself of Goblin, who has become steadily more malevolent, and the account he gives of his family and his transformation is how Lestat comes to understand the spirit's reach.
Rating coming soonBorn to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Damon Fields has no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-coloured hair, a caustic wit and a talent for survival. The novel follows him through foster care, child labour, failing schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves and crushing losses, in his own voice.
Rating coming soonMr Vane owns a library that seems to be haunted by its former librarian, a figure who resembles him. Following him leads into a world where life, death and salvation are the material of the story, and where the characters have to work out what is required of them. It is among the darkest of George MacDonald's works and among the most serious.
Rating coming soonMiri thinks she has her wife back when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe, but it becomes clear that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in the vessel, and whatever the crew were meant to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto land and into their home.
Rating coming soonAn Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations. It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it is the axis the novel turns on: a philosophising bean can, a mystifying dessert spoon, a young waitress entering the New York art world and a welder who discovers a lost god all revolve around it.
Rating coming soonA middle-class English family on holiday in a small village in Norfolk is visited by an uninvited guest named Amber, whose arrival has a profound effect on each of them. She is eventually thrown out of the house by the mother, Eve, but the consequences of her appearance continue after the family has returned to London.
Rating coming soonTeoh Yun Ling was seventeen when she first heard of the man who had been the gardener to the Emperor of Japan, and a war and a decade would pass before she travelled up to the Garden of Evening Mists in 1951 to see him. A survivor of a Japanese camp, she has been helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, and she asks the gardener to create a memorial garden for her sister.
Rating coming soonThe final instalment of Hilary Mantel's trilogy charts the last four years in the life of Thomas Cromwell, minister at the court of King Henry VIII, from 1536 until his execution in 1540. It follows Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and completes the rise and fall of the man who ran the king's business, on whom the whole machinery of the reign depends.
Rating coming soonDr Cliff Miyashiro travels to the Arctic Circle to continue his late daughter's research and finds a virus newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague it releases reshapes life on earth for generations, and the novel follows the people adjusting to that new world, including an aspiring comedian employed at a theme park built for terminally ill children. Grief is the book's subject as much as the catastrophe.
Rating coming soonThe university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp and is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. A chance meeting by a river becomes an intense affair, and after their camp duties end the two spend a few weeks in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, before returning to a society that forbids what they are.
Rating coming soonEveryone in 1920s New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a Wall Street tycoon and she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats, and together they have risen to the top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth as a decade of speculation ends. The mystery of what their fortune cost is the centre of a successful 1937 novel called Bonds.
Rating coming soonWhenever foreigners visit Paradise they ask Darling and her friends to smile for the camera, and the things they have to smile about include stolen guavas, gifts from aid organisations and singing along to pop songs at the top of their voices. What all of them want is the real paradise, in America or Britain, and the novel follows Darling from Zimbabwe to the American Midwest.
Rating coming soonDame Lettie Colston, seventy-nine and a pioneer of penal reform, has a great deal in common with the elderly residents of the Maud Long Medical Ward: scorn, resentment, boredom and the humour that masks an awareness of approaching death. Then the anonymous telephone calls begin, with a voice saying simply that the recipient must remember that they will die.
Rating coming soonBlack Beauty's life begins on the grounds of an aristocratic English family, where the young horse learns early lessons from his mother about not biting or kicking even in play. Circumstances force his sale to a new master, and the first of several such moves takes him from pasture to the cobbled streets of nineteenth-century England as he passes between owners with different attitudes to animals.
Rating coming soonIn Warsaw in 1942 the war is raging and people live in fear from day to day. Ruth, Bronia and Edek have to fend for themselves when both of their parents are taken by the Nazis, and the novel follows their attempt to survive and to find each other again across a continent that has been broken up by the fighting.
Rating coming soonMichael's parents buy a yacht and take him to sail around the world. Washed overboard in a fierce storm, he finds himself on the shore of a remote island, and soon discovers that he is not alone. Kensuke is a former Japanese soldier who survived the war and the bombing of Hiroshima but lost his family, and the bond between the two of them forces a choice about the life Kensuke has built.
Rating coming soonIt is the very first adventure of the Secret Seven, and the club of child detectives is already on the trail of some peculiar clues. It is snowing, the seven are in disguise, and the lead takes them to a spooky old house and a mystery that has to be solved before the weather or the adults put a stop to it.
Rating coming soonEx-military policeman Jack Reacher is lying low in Key West, digging swimming pools by hand, and he is not pleased when a private detective starts asking questions about him. When the detective, Costello, turns up dead with his fingertips sliced off, Reacher decides it is time to move on, and the case he had been avoiding follows him.
Rating coming soonTwo women who knew Jack Reacher are dead. Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cook were both high-flying soldiers who had been forced to resign from the service, and both were found in their own homes, naked, in a bath full of paint. Both deaths look like the work of an army man, a loner with a score to settle, and Reacher fits the description.
Rating coming soonA dying criminal confesses that his loot has been stored in the tower. Both towers of the looted mansion are searched without success, and it is left to the Hardy boys to make the discovery that clears up the mystery and clears the name of a friend's father. The official search has already failed twice, which is what gives the brothers their opening.
Rating coming soonJack Reacher is an elite ex-military policeman who left the service years ago and has moved from place to place without family, possessions or commitments. Trouble finds him wherever he goes, and unfinished business has now found him: ten years ago a key investigation went wrong and someone got away with murder, and a chance encounter brings it all back.
Rating coming soonRoland Deschain, the last gunslinger, has been chasing his adversary, the man in black, for years. The novel follows his trek through a vast desert and beyond in pursuit of him, and the people he meets on the way, including a boy named Jake Chambers who travels with him for part of the journey. It fuses western fiction with fantasy, science fiction and horror.
Rating coming soonThe Dark One has grown in power with many of the seals on his prison broken, and the world is being changed by it. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, holds a throne at Caemlyn, where an unexpected visitor may change everything. In Salidar the White Tower in exile prepares an embassy to him, in Emond's Field Perrin prepares to march, and to the south lies Illian.
Rating coming soonRichard Cypher's father was murdered a month ago, in his own home, and Richard is still dealing with the loss when he rescues Kahlan Amnell from four mercenaries. With help from his grandfather the three of them flee to the midlands to stop the expansion of Darken Rahl's empire, and the journey involves secrets, deaths and the beginning of a legend.
Rating coming soonA dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to the eighth son of an eighth son who is being born at that very moment. The fact that the child is a daughter is discovered a little too late, and the consequence is a girl who has inherited a wizard's staff and a wizard's business in a world where that is not permitted.
Rating coming soonTwelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fitted into her life. She has skipped several grades and does not connect with the older pupils, and she is not comfortable at home either, because Sophie is a telepath who can read minds. Then she meets Fitz, who is a telepath too, and who tells her that the reason she has never felt at home is that she is not.
Rating coming soonAlice climbs through a large looking-glass into a world she can see beyond it, and finds that things are reversed there, including logic. Running keeps a person in the same place and walking away brings them closer. The book is built on chess rather than cards, and it opens indoors on a snowy November night exactly six months after the earlier book.
Rating coming soonThe city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race, and two hundred years later the great lamps that light it are beginning to flicker. When Lina finds part of an ancient message she becomes sure it holds a secret that will save the city, and she and her friend Doon have to work out the clues before the lights go out for good.
Rating coming soonAfter angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as an ordinary teenage boy, and the four-thousand-year-old deity has to learn to survive in the modern world until he can find a way to regain Zeus's favour. Apollo has enemies, and the only place he can think of to go is Camp Half-Blood.
Rating coming soonMagnus Chase has lived alone on the streets of Boston since the night two years ago when his mother told him to run, surviving by his wits and staying ahead of the police and truant officers. Then his uncle Randolph begins looking for him, and Magnus falls into his clutches. Randolph talks about Norse history and about a weapon lost for thousands of years, and then a fire giant attacks the city.
Rating coming soonThe life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who then dies trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm. Jesse Aarons is an artistic boy from a poor family, and Leslie Burke is a tomboy from a wealthy one, and together they create a kingdom for themselves that only the two of them enter.
Rating coming soonAt 11.44 on the morning of 21 October, the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is separated from the outside world by an invisible, semipermeable barrier of unknown origin that appears out of the sky without warning. The novel follows the town's inhabitants over the eight days that follow, as the community becomes a domed city.
Rating coming soonMeg Jorgenson wants a fresh start after a failed relationship, so she takes a teaching position in the town of Miracle, Kentucky and vows to avoid smooth-talking men. There she meets eight-year-old Cammy, who uses a wheelchair and is certain that God will heal her, and Cammy's widowed father Vance, who has devoted his life to her care. Then an experimental procedure divides them.
Rating coming soonMarilla is a lieutenant's daughter, and the man she wants is the lieutenant's prisoner. The novel sets her against her family and her own circumstances as she follows the man the fort is holding, and it places her in the wilderness of Oklahoma, where she has to weigh love against disgrace. Her loyalty and her desire point in opposite directions for the length of the book.
Rating coming soonOne moment Lauri had been a ballet student living quietly with her aunt in Downhollow, and the next a tall, dark ballet master had walked into her life. Carried off by Maxim di Corte to his Venetian palace, she becomes a slave to the dance, and through him she begins to understand the feeling behind real balletic expression.
Rating coming soonIn the medieval kingdom of Goredd, women are expected to be ladies, men are their protectors and dragons may be whoever they choose. Tess is none of those things: she speaks out of turn, has wild ideas and cannot keep away from trouble. When she goes too far her family decides the only path for her is a nunnery, and on the day she is to go she cuts her hair, puts on her boots and leaves instead.
Rating coming soonWhen Rory O'Fallon finds a baby girl on his front porch, he is determined to find her mother, and that means calling his sons home to O'Fallon's Landing. Keefe O'Fallon is the newest face on a soap opera, but family comes first, and escaping the press to the backwaters of the Mississippi seems like a good answer until he meets the woman caring for the baby and discovers she is not the nanny at all.
Rating coming soonSimoni knows she will never get on with Kent Travers. He is a pilot and so holds authority over her, and he is tyrannical and unreasonable about it. Worse, competent as she generally is, every time she comes near Captain Travers she manages to make some particularly stupid mistake. She is relieved that they will both soon be leaving the airline, except that their paths keep crossing.
Rating coming soonA young war hero returns home to recover from serious injury and rediscovers a childhood friend. Their renewed friendship becomes love, and their common background and shared faith bind them together. The soldier then sets about returning to the fighting in order to help rescue the man who had encouraged his faith and saved his life.
Rating coming soonLiz never particularly wanted to marry, having a low opinion of men, and she certainly did not want to marry the half-Greek Nigel Shapani. Yet she finds herself settled in his house in Delphi. Under the terms of an eccentric will, two family fortunes would be lost if the two of them did not marry, and her elderly relatives needed the money. She is determined to keep it a business arrangement only.
Rating coming soonWhen Emma Hanson's young friend dies as a single mother and leaves baby Mandy in Emma's care, the town of Roswell takes sides. Most of the men say she cannot manage it, since she has a restaurant to run, but the townswomen rally to help. When a councilman plots to take the child away, Emma is forced to act, and she places an advertisement for a mail-order husband.
Rating coming soonIn Texas in 1891, the teacher Charlotte Atherton is on the run in order to keep a little girl entrusted to her care safe. The tracker Stone Hammond is in close pursuit, until he learns the truth of the situation, and then discovers that his heart may have found a new object to pursue. What began as a hunt becomes a shared obligation.
The library is split into eight primary genres so you can find the kind of book you actually want: romance, where the relationship carries the story; fantasy, from epic quests to cosy shops; science fiction, from the classics to this year's awards; horror, from gothic novels to haunted houses; mystery and thrillers, from detectives and spies to domestic suspense; historical fiction, for stories built inside a past period; literary fiction, for books whose interest is in the writing and the people rather than in a plot engine; and adventure, for journeys, survival and treasure hunts. Each shelf page says what belongs on it.
Tags are a second, separate layer. Romantasy marks the books where romance and a fantasy world carry the story together, and contemporary romance marks the love stories set in the modern real world. Neither is a genre: a tagged book still lives on one or two of the eight shelves, and the tag is a way to narrow a shelf rather than a shelf of its own. Tags have landing pages too.
The title, the author and the publication year are checked against the publisher or a library record before a page goes up, and the cover is the one that record carries. Where no source states the first-publication date, the page says the year is the earliest edition we could confirm instead of claiming a date.
The synopsis on each page is written for this library. It tells you who the characters are and what they are up against, then stops. It is not a review, there are no scores anywhere on these shelves, and nothing here claims that we have read a book we have not written about yet.
Baby Bat keeps the V4mp book library.
Goodreads and social links will be added soon.
Eight primary genres, each with its own filters. Titles that genuinely belong to two genres are listed on both and keep one page.
The love story is the plot: fantasy courts, dragon academies and modern cities all count.
676 booksPrimary genreEpic quests, grimdark cities, retold myths and a few very stubborn rabbits.
685 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 booksOne page per book, shared between genres: 858 titles sit on more than one genre right now. Romance 676, Fantasy 685, Sci-Fi 536, Horror 381, Mystery & Thriller 599, Historical Fiction 580, Literary Fiction 575, Adventure 324.
Tags cut across the genres. 225 of the 3473 books carry one.
Romance at the centre of the story, with a fantasy world carrying it.
70 booksTagModern love stories: offices, small towns, sports teams, group chats and people who talk too much.
155 booksRomantasy 70 and Contemporary Romance 155. A tag landing works like a shelf: search, subgenre chips, primary-genre chips and sorting.
