What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorShadow of Night
Deborah Harkness · 592 pages
Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes Diana and Matthew on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and
Ghostwalk
Rebecca Stott · 307 pages
A Cambridge historian, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found drowned, clutching a glass prism in her hand. The book she was writing about Isaac Newton's involvement with alchemy--the culmination of her lifelong obsession with the seventeenth century--remains unfinished. When her son, Cameron, asks his former lover, Lydia Brooke, to ghostwrite the missing final chapters of his mother's book, Lydia agrees a
This Dark Endeavor
Kenneth Oppel · 298 pages
When his twin brother falls ill in the family's chateau in the independent republic of Geneva in the eighteenth century, sixteen-year-old Victor Frankenstein embarks on a dangerous and uncertain quest to create the forbidden Elixir of Life described in an ancient text in the family's secret Biblioteka Obscura.
Wolf on a String
Benjamin Black · 309 pages
"Bestselling author Benjamin Black turns his eye to sixteenth century Prague and a story of murder, magic and the dark art of wielding extraordinary power Christian Stern, an ambitious young scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague in the bitter winter of 1599, intent on making his fortune at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, the eccentric Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, drunk and lost, Ch
The Bloodletter's Daughter: A Novel of Old Bohemia
Linda Lafferty · 490 pages
In 1606, the city of Prague shines as a golden mecca of art and culture carefully cultivated by Emperor Rudolf II. But the emperor hides an ugly secret: His bastard son, Don Julius, is afflicted with a madness that pushes the young prince to unspeakable depravity. Desperate to stem his son's growing number of scandals, the emperor exiles Don Julius to a remote corner of Bohemia, where the young ma
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo · 443 pages
In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.
The Magician
W. Somerset Maugham · 233 pages
Stunningly rejacketed as part of a major reinvention of this neglected 20th century masterSet in the bohemian cafe society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, Arthur and his beautiful, innocent fiancee Margaret look forward
The Alchemist's Daughter
Katharine McMahon · 329 pages
There are long-held secrets at the manor house in Buckinghamshire, England, where Emilie Selden has been raised in near isolation by her father. A student of Isaac Newton, John Selden believes he can turn his daughter into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. Secluded in their ancient house, with only two servants for company, he fills Emilie with knowledge and records her progress obses
The Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss · 667 pages
My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it's spoken, can mean The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree. "The Flame" is obvious if you've ever seen me. I have red hair, bright. If I had been born a couple of hundr
A Reliable Wife
Robert Goolrick · 291 pages
A widower advertises for "a reliable wife" and he chooses Catherine. To her surprise, Catherine learns to love Ralph and must, as a result, abandon the remaining traces of her former life and cope with the haunting effects of family secrets.
The House on Vesper Sands (Inspector Cutter Mystery, An)
Paraic O'Donnell · 416 pages
The Fire Rose
Mercedes Lackey · 433 pages
Lackey's story of a young turn of the century female who is brought to the wilds of San Francisco to read books for a reclusive alchemist recreates the fable of the monster who wins the heart of a young woman yet forbids her to view him. For the monster here is a magician caught in a werewolf spell, and the young girl is a destitute young woman with no other choices. A retelling of Beauty and the
The Taker
Alma Katsu · 438 pages
Drawn to a woman who reveals herself to be immortal, Luke, a young doctor, hears the story of how she was abandoned by a lover 200 years earlier and abducted by a centuries-old Hungarian count who granted her eternal life.
The House of Doctor Dee
Peter Ackroyd · 277 pages
This novel centres on the famous 16th-century alchemist and astrologer John Dee. Reputedly a black magician, he was imprisoned by Queen Mary for allegedly attempting to kill her through sorcery. When Matthew Palmer inherits an old house in Clerkenwell, he feels that he has become part of its past.
While Beauty Slept
Elizabeth Blackwell · 464 pages
"A Gothic retelling of the real story behind the legend of Sleeping Beauty"--
Bereft
Chris Womersley · 235 pages
The year is 1919 and the Great War has ended. Sergeant Quinn Walker, damaged body and soul by his experiences in the killing fields of France, decides to return home to the small and desolate town of Flint, Australia, to set right the past.
The Waterworks
E.L. Doctorow · 264 pages
New York of 1870 is the background of this tale of a journalist who finds out that his father forged his own death so that he could be part of the experiment of a mad scientist to prolong his life.
Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco · 641 pages
English: An Enthralling Mystery, a breathtaking rollercoaster ride through a world of ideas and aberrations, an adventure into the modern mind. One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, an Adolphe Menjou mustache, wears maroon socks, and once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
V E Schwab · 544 pages
This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets. This is a story about love. 1827. London