More like The Clockwork Countenance
anchored on:steampunk
but
- The Anubis Gates
series3 books1983
similar bymysterious19th century+2 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.
- George Dower / Infernal Devices
series3 books1987
similar bysteampunk19th century+1 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.
- Newbury & Hobbes Investigations
series23 books2008
similar bysteampunk19th century
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 Prestige
Christopher Prieststandalone novel1995
similar bymysterious19th century+1 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.
- Jack Mason Adventures / The Steampunk Detective
series6 books2012
similar bysteampunk19th century+1 more
- The Raven King
series13 books1996
similar by19th century
Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell reintroduces magic to an alternate nineteenth-century England, centering on the prickly rivalry between the two title magicians as they revive a lost English tradition. The linked collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which includes the earlier story "Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower," explores the same magical history from other corners of England and refers back to the legendary Raven King, said to have created English magic centuries before. The two books share a setting and mythology rather than a single sequential plot.
- Steampunk Scarlett / Society of Supernatural Sleuths
series4 books2011
similar bysteampunk19th century+1 more
- The Turn of the Screw
series3 books1898
similar by19th century+1 more
Henry James's 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw follows a governess at an isolated English country house who becomes convinced that the two children in her care are being stalked by malevolent ghosts, narrated entirely through her own increasingly uncertain account. Its ambiguity over whether the haunting is real has made it one of the most discussed ghost stories in English literature and prompted later works built around it, including Michael Hastings's The Nightcomers, a 1971 prequel imagining events at the house before the governess's arrival. A stage adaptation of James's original text also exists.
