More like A Clockwork Heart
anchored on:steampunkbritish isles19th centuryurban fantasyparanormal romancerobots+5 more
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- The Bookman Universe
series6 books2010
similar by19th centurymysterioussteampunkmurder investigationpolitical intriguebritish isles+4 more
- George Dower / Infernal Devices
series3 books1987
similar by19th centurysteampunk+4 more
K. W. Jeter's trilogy, whose 1987 original helped coin the term 'steampunk,' follows clockmaker George Dower as he's dragged into escalating Victorian conspiracies involving mechanical devices, secret societies, and inventions that shouldn't work but do. Infernal Devices, Fiendish Schemes, and Grim Expectations mix dark comedy with the gears-and-brass aesthetic the series helped establish before it had a name.
- Freaks
Kieran Larwoodstandalone novel2012
similar by19th centuryadventurousmysteriousmurder investigationbritish islesbig city
In Victorian London, a lonely band of misfits trapped in a sideshow decides to put their extraordinary talents to use to solve the mysteries that no one else cares about, starting with the stealing of poor children from the banks of the Thames.
- The Anubis Gates
series3 books1983
similar by19th centuryadventurousmysteriousbritish isles+1 more
The Anubis Gates is a single time-travel fantasy novel by Tim Powers, following a present-day academic who takes part in a time-travel experiment and ends up stranded in early nineteenth-century London. It won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1983 and the Science Fiction Chronicle Award the following year.
- Sally Lockhart
series4 books1985
similar by19th centurymurder investigationbritish isles+3 more
Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart quartet follows a resourceful, unconventional heroine navigating Victorian London - a sharpshooting, mathematically gifted young orphan who builds an improbable career as a financial consultant against the era's expectations for women. The Ruby in the Smoke opens with Sally investigating her father's death and a mysterious jewel; the following novels widen out into fraud, opium-trade crime, and international intrigue, tracking Sally's evolving relationships, including with the journalist Daniel Goldberg, across four Victorian-set mysteries.
- Sarah Tolerance
series2 books2003
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationbritish isles+2 more
- The Difference Engine
William Gibson & Bruce Sterlingstandalone novel1990
similar by19th centurysteampunkbritish islespolitical intrigue+1 more
The computer age arrives a century early with Babbage's perfection of his 'analytical engine'. The industrial revolution is accelerated by the development of steam-driven cybernetic 'Engines'. An advanced Great Britain prepares to better the world's lot. An example of the 'steampunk' sub-genre of the cyberpunk movement.
- Hunchback Assignments / Modo: Mission Clockwork
series5 books2009
similar by19th centuryadventuroussteampunk+1 more
- The Waterworks
E. L. Doctorowstandalone novel1994
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationbig city+1 more
The Waterworks (1994) is a book by American writer E. L. Doctorow. It was his eighth published novel.
- Fire, Burn!
John Dickson Carrstandalone novel1957
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationbritish isles
Fire, Burn! is a 1957 historical mystery novel by John Dickson Carr. Carr considered this one of his best impossible crime novels.
- Ministry of Alchemy
series5 books2016
similar bymysteriousadventurouspolitical intriguebig city+2 more
- The Golden
Lucius Shepardstandalone novel1993
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationeurope+1 more
Deviating from traditional tales that feature lonely vampires who prowl through human society in search of victims or solace, this account of vampires flourishing in their own "inhuman society" takes place in the year 1860, when their centuries-long breeding experiments have finally produced "The Golden," a mortal whose blood is perfect and powerful. Mobilized by the news of this discovery, aristocratic vampire clans arrive at the looming Castle Banat, where they plan to partake of the sublime blood. To their shock, the guests find that The Golden, a young girl, has been brutally murdered and her blood already drained. The story also follows the Inspector Michael Beheim—a recent vampire—assigned to track down the killer. Recounted in full 19th-century literary style with gothic elements and foreshadowing, the inspector navigates his way through the vampire world and the crime therein.
- Rivers of London
series32 books2011
similar bymysteriousmurder investigationurban fantasybritish islesbig city
The Rivers of London series is a series of urban fantasy novels by English author Ben Aaronovitch, and comics/graphic novels by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, illustrated by Lee Sullivan.
- On Her Majesty's Psychic Service
series1 book2015
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationbritish islesbig city
- Newbury & Hobbes Investigations
series23 books2008
similar by19th centurysteampunkbritish isles+2 more
George Mann's steampunk series follows Sir Maurice Newbury, an occult investigator working for the crown in an alternate, more mechanized Victorian Britain, and his assistant Veronica Hobbes, as they take on cases blending supernatural threats with the era's mechanical marvels. The Affinity Bridge, the opening novel, entangles them with a crashed automaton airship and a spreading plague of the reanimated; later books deepen Newbury's struggle with addiction and Veronica's search for her institutionalized sister. It combines detective procedural with alternate-history steampunk London.
- The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
series2 books2020
similar byadventurousmysteriousurban fantasybritish islesbig city
Garth Nix's The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is set in a slightly alternate 1983 London, where Susan Arkshaw searches for the father she's never met. Her path crosses with Merlin, a left-handed bookseller — one of the fighting branch of an extended family of magical booksellers who police the mythic Old World where it intrudes on the modern one — who is pursuing his own hunt for the entity behind his mother's death. As their separate investigations tangle together, Susan's ordinary-seeming clues turn out to lead somewhere much stranger. The Sinister Booksellers of Bath continues their story.
- A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
James De Millestandalone novel1888
similar by19th centuryadventurousmysterious
A fantasy novel about the discovery of a civilization hidden near Antarctica.
- Fata Morgana
William Kotzwinklestandalone novel1977
similar by19th centurymysteriousmurder investigationeuropebig city
From the flaps of the Knopf first edition: "In Fata Morgana a celebrated novelist turns conjurer to bring us a supremely theatrical magic show - a rich exotic entertainment of crime, treble-trickery, and legerdermain, with Europe as its stage and the golden leaders of the Uppercrust and the Underworld as its players. The time and place are Paris, 1861 - the extravagant capital of Louis Napoleon and his Empress Eugenie, the gaudy, blatant public arena of Great Whores and fabulous charlatans; the treacherous private labyrinth of Police Inspector Paul Picard and the human prey he stalks. Picard is a hunter of the purest instincts, with an appetite for the ladies, a taste for lemon tarts, and a policeman's nose for hard realities. As the book opens he is on his way to the Opera, for music and murder: among the guests is as elegant a killer as ever sliced his way through Parisian high society, and on his arm is the young woman he means to decapitate tonight. A strange encounter with them precipitates Picard into a new and (apparently) trivial assignment - a case that is fated to disrupt and then transform, irrevocably, his life. At first it seems routine: a man - Ric Lazare - has recently arrived in Paris and in a short time has captured the jaded attention and the favors of the entire city. His aura of opulence, his bewitching wife, Rene, and, above all, his unearthly fortune-telling machine have won him entree to the salons (and the bank vaults) of the most dazzling leaders of society, including, it is whispered, the Emperor himself. But, who - and what - is Lazare? Is he a crook? A master of illusions? A real magician? Or - more terrible - a reincarnation from an Older World? To find the answer, Picard must follow the thread of the man's past. His quest takes him from Paris to Vienna, Nuremberg, Budapest, and on to the dark, menacing valleys and steppes of eastern Hungary, uncovering a trail of deceit and violent death: a fabled toy maker driven to destroy himself and a lifetime's priceless creations... a man ruthlessly killed over a dice game... a beautiful woman purchased at auction, then stolen away... the sudden death of a priest. Beset by intimations of his own mortality, by a sense of inexplicable entrapment in a malign world of mechanical and deadly playthings, by a slowly suffocating conviction that he is undertaking a journey he has made before, Picard, caught up in the quickening pace, returns to Paris - and to a terrifying confrontation with his quarry and his own destiny."
