More like From Hell
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- The Prestige
Christopher Prieststandalone novel1995
similar bybritish isles19th centuryhistorical fiction+2 more
A magician called Borden (at least in private) writes his own version of his life as a magician. There's a lot of focus on a trick, where he seems to move across any width of stage in an instant, and on a feud with another magician, Angier. The account includes passages, where he can't decide what exactly to write, arguing with himself. 3 generations later a Borden (at least biologically) learns about his ancestor. He's also convinced, he somehow has a twin brother, who's happy about this development.
- Sally Lockhart
series4 books1985
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fiction
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.
- Fire, Burn!
John Dickson Carrstandalone novel1957
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th century+1 more
Fire, Burn! is a 1957 historical mystery novel by John Dickson Carr. Carr considered this one of his best impossible crime novels.
- The Seance
John Harwoodstandalone novel2008
similar bybritish isles19th centuryhorror+1 more
The Seance is a 2008 horror novel by John Harwood. Set in late 19th century London, it follows the story of Constance Langton who in an attempt to make her mother healthy again takes her to a séance only to result in tragic consequences. The Seance won the 2008 Aurealis Award for best horror novel.
- Savage: From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Track of Jack the Ripper
Richard Laymonstandalone novel1993
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th centuryhorrorhistorical fiction
A teenage boy witnesses Jack the Ripper's last brutal murder and chases the murderer across the sea to New York City, then across the American West.
- The Night of the Ripper
Robert Blochstandalone novel1984
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th centuryhorror
Night of the Ripper is a 1984 novel written by American writer Robert Bloch.
- Carnacki
universe102 books1909
Start hereCarnacki, the Ghost-Finder · Start here
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The card arrives without preamble: dinner at 472 Cheyne Walk, and afterward the tale. Thomas Carnacki explains nothing until his four friends are fed and settled by the fire — then, pipe lit, he recounts the thing he has just come back from, and at the last word turns them out into the Embankment dark with a curt "Out you go!" This is the world of the Ghost-Finder: an Edwardian London where a haunting is a case to be worked, and the man who works it trusts neither the credulous nor the smug. William Hope Hodgson raised Carnacki in a slim sheaf of stories — "The Gateway of the Monster," "The Whistling Room," "The Horse of the Invisible" and their fellows, gathered in 1913 and rounded out to nine. Each is a siege: Carnacki barricades himself inside a defended circle, half medieval and half modern — chalk, garlic, water-drawn pentacles and the glass tubes of his own Electric Pentacle humming against the dark — and consults the crumbling Sigsand Manuscript for a rite that may or may not hold. A century on, other hands keep the Chelsea rooms lit: William Meikle, the team of Chico Kidd and Rick Kennett, and editors such as John Linwood Grant, Robert M. Price and Sam Gafford send him after horrors Hodgson never named. What sets the cases apart is Carnacki's refusal to decide in advance. A whistling room may prove a swindle with a trick of plumbing behind it, or a genuine intrusion of the "ab-natural" pressing at the pentacle till the light fails — and until the last page neither he nor you can say which. Begin at the source: read Hodgson's 1913 collection in its own order, "The Gateway of the Monster" first. The later homages are a loose fraternity with no fixed sequence; take them up afterward, as the dark permits.
- The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club
series3 books2017
similar bybritish isles19th century+1 more
- The Nameless
Ramsey Campbellstandalone novel1981
similar bymurder investigationbritish isleshorror
A call for help... from a little girl long dead. Barbara Waugh experienced the worst horror a mother can imagine. Her little girl, Angela, was murdered. Horribly. But now, years later, mysterious phone calls bring both hope and fear. Each time, the girl's voice on the other end simply pleads, 'Mummy, help me.' Could Angela still be alive after all? Barbara's desperate search for the truth - and her daughter - will lead her into a living nightmare, an evil world of torture, murder and gruesome rituals, where the initiated have abandoned their names... and are searching for new victims.
- American Gothic
Robert Blochstandalone novel1974
similar by19th centuryhorrorhistorical fiction+1 more
American Gothic is a 1974 psychological horror novel by American writer Robert Bloch, a fictionalized portrayal of real life serial killer H. H. Holmes, who is renamed "G. Gordon Gregg" for the story.
- The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
Jeffrey Fordstandalone novel2002
similar bymurder investigation19th centuryhorrorhistorical fiction
"The toast of 1893 New York society, the portraitist Piero Piambo has his pick of choice assignments. Acclaimed by his peers and his "betters," he is a fixture in the city's most opulent salons, yet he fears he has sold his soul to arrive there. But then comes a commission unlike any other - one that will test Piambo's talents, his will .. and his sanity.". "The client is a Mrs. Charbuque, and the offer she makes to the artist is as bizarre and intriguing as it is financially rewarding. Piambo must paint the lady's portrait, and for the service he may name any price. However, though he may question her at length on any topic, he must never look upon his subject. And if the painting ends up a true likeness, his payment will be doubled.". "With sketchbook in hand and his "model" hidden behind an elegant screen, the artist begins his haunting descent into her life and mind. Carried by her words through a strange childhood in a world of ice - where she aided an obsessed, perhaps murderous, father in his study of the divine language of snowflakes - and across a history marked by fame and despair, desire and rage, phantasm and myth, Piambo is alternately seduced and repulsed by the story she has to tell. Yet each session leaves him more determined than ever to unwrap the enigma that is Mrs. Charbuque.". "But while he struggles to capture in oils the face of a woman he has never seen, a series of horrific and inexplicable deaths rocks the outside city. On street corners, in the alleys off the bustling shopping areas, and between the crumbling tenements, anonymous women are dying, their lifeblood flowing freely like tears from their eyes. And the deeper Piambo is drawn into Mrs. Charbuque's world, the more he begins to suspect that these terrible events, his impossible task, and his odd "benefactress" are somehow intimately connected."--BOOK JACKET.
- The Bone Garden
Tess Gerritsenstandalone novel2007
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The Bone Garden is a 2007 novel written by Chinese-American novelist Tess Gerritsen, loosely part of the Jane Rizzoli / Maura Isles series.
- The Kingdom of Bones
Stephen Gallagherstandalone novel2007
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th century+1 more
Escaping from custody after being arrested for the serial killings of pauper children, former boxing champion Tom Sayers, desperate to prove himself innocent and to reveal the true murderer, searches for the dark truth and ancient evil behind the murders.
- Moon
James Herbertstandalone novel1985
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Jon Childes is considered with suspicion by the inhabitants of the island he moved to. Yet, he has a respectable job in the local school; he misses the daughter, remained with the mother, but he feels free from the past nightmares... Suddenly everything restarts: visions, at first blurred and then clear. Sequences of atrocity and blood go through his mind as he sees the "slaughtering thing" in action, and cannot prevent it. [translated from back cover]
- Sebastian St. Cyr
series1 book2012
similar bymurder investigationbritish isles19th centuryhistorical fiction
- Hawksmoor
Peter Ackroydstandalone novel1985
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Hawksmoor is a 1985 novel by English writer Peter Ackroyd. It won Best Novel at the 1985 Whitbread Awards and the Guardian Fiction Prize. It tells the parallel stories of Nicholas Dyer, who builds seven churches in 18th-century London for which he needs human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, detective in the 1980s, who investigates murders committed in the same churches. Hawksmoor has been praised as Peter Ackroyd's best novel and an example of postmodernism.
