Mark A. Latham writes the kind of fiction that feels tailor-made for readers who love gaslit streets, occult secrets, and mysteries with a strong historical texture. Best known for novels such as The Lazarus Gate and The Iscariot Sanction, he blends Victorian adventure, horror, espionage, and the supernatural into fast-moving stories with rich atmosphere.
If what you enjoy most about Latham is the combination of period detail, eerie menace, secret societies, and imaginative twists on history, the authors below are excellent next reads. Some lean more toward steampunk, some toward gothic horror, and some toward classic historical mystery, but all share part of the appeal that makes Mark A. Latham so readable.
James Lovegrove is a strong recommendation for readers who want high-concept adventure wrapped around myth, history, and speculative ideas. Like Latham, he writes with momentum and imagination, often taking familiar historical or legendary material and pushing it into darker, more explosive territory.
A great place to start is The Age of Zeus, which imagines a world in which the Greek gods have returned and imposed their rule on humanity. It has the same kind of energetic genre-blending that makes Latham appealing: mythology, action, intrigue, and a vividly altered reality.
George Mann is one of the most natural read-alikes for Mark A. Latham. His work regularly combines Victorian settings, detective fiction, occult dangers, and steampunk machinery, all delivered with a flair for mood and world-building.
His novel The Affinity Bridge is an especially good match. Set in an alternate Victorian London filled with airships, automatons, and conspiracies, it offers the same pleasure of historical atmosphere complicated by strange science and hidden menace.
Kim Newman is ideal for readers who enjoy alternate history with a macabre imagination. He has a gift for taking recognizable historical worlds and introducing one transformative supernatural change, then following the consequences with wit, intelligence, and style.
His best-known novel, Anno Dracula, asks what would happen if Dracula had triumphed and become part of British public life. The result is a densely layered Victorian fantasy-horror novel packed with literary references, historical figures, and gothic intrigue.
Tim Powers has long been a master of historical fantasy, especially the kind that hides magic, occult forces, and secret histories inside real events. Readers who admire Latham’s ability to make the supernatural feel embedded within the past will likely find Powers especially rewarding.
The Anubis Gates is a standout choice. It combines time travel, Egyptian magic, literary history, and a twisting plot into a novel that feels both intellectually inventive and thrillingly strange.
Jonathan L. Howard brings a darker comic edge to fantasy and horror, but he shares with Latham a love of the uncanny, the grotesque, and the cleverly constructed adventure plot. His fiction often feels sharp, stylish, and just a little gleefully wicked.
Try Johannes Cabal the Necromancer if you want a supernatural tale led by an intelligent, morally dubious protagonist. Its dry humor and occult inventiveness make it a strong choice for readers who like dark fantasy with personality.
Lavie Tidhar is a good fit for readers who enjoy literary playfulness alongside genre thrills. His fiction often fuses alternate history, pulp adventure, noir sensibilities, and speculative invention, producing stories that feel both familiar and off-kilter in compelling ways.
The Bookman is the most obvious recommendation here. Set in a reimagined Victorian world populated by mechanical beings and literary echoes, it offers conspiracies, strange technology, and a heightened historical atmosphere that should resonate with fans of Latham.
Genevieve Cogman leans more toward adventurous fantasy than gothic horror, but readers who love Latham’s layered settings and blend of mystery with the impossible may find her work enormously enjoyable. Her novels are brisk, clever, and full of hidden structures of power.
The Invisible Library is an excellent entry point. With its mix of librarianship, espionage, magic, alternate worlds, and a distinctly Victorian flavor in parts of its setting, it captures some of the same pleasures of secret knowledge and dangerous intrigue.
Cavan Scott writes accessible, fast-paced fiction that often draws on horror, adventure, and established genre traditions. If you like the idea of classic Victorian characters moving through sinister, uncanny plots, he is well worth exploring.
Sherlock Holmes: The Patchwork Devil is a particularly relevant recommendation. It places Holmes and Watson in a dark, suspenseful investigation with a strong gothic charge, making it a natural pick for readers who enjoy historical mysteries tinged with the supernatural.
Anthony Horowitz is best known for his elegant plotting and his skill with classic mystery forms. While he is less overtly supernatural than Latham, he excels at giving historical detective fiction suspense, polish, and narrative drive.
The House of Silk is a fine choice for readers who enjoy Victorian suspense. Horowitz captures the tone of Conan Doyle while delivering a darker and more emotionally layered mystery than many traditional Holmes pastiches.
Lyndsay Faye is an excellent recommendation if what you most value in Latham is the immersive historical setting. Her novels are vivid, textured, and deeply attentive to the social pressures and dangers of the nineteenth century.
The Gods of Gotham takes readers into 1840s New York and follows one of the city’s earliest police officers through murder, corruption, and political unrest. It is less fantastical than Latham’s work, but it delivers comparable darkness, atmosphere, and tension.
Caleb Carr is a strong match for readers who appreciate sinister historical mysteries grounded in real psychological and social detail. His fiction has a seriousness and depth that complements the more sensational pleasures of gothic and occult storytelling.
The Alienist remains one of the defining historical thrillers of its era. Set in 1890s New York, it follows an investigation into a serial killer using early criminal profiling, combining meticulous period research with a mounting sense of dread.
If the eeriest parts of Mark A. Latham’s fiction are what stay with you, M.R. James is essential reading. He helped define the modern ghost story through restrained, scholarly, deeply unsettling tales in which ordinary research or curiosity opens the door to something dreadful.
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is the classic starting point. These stories build terror through implication, atmosphere, and the sense that the past is not dead at all, but waiting to intrude.
William Hope Hodgson will appeal to readers who like their horror strange, atmospheric, and genuinely uncanny. His work often feels like a bridge between gothic fiction, cosmic dread, and weird adventure, which makes him a good companion author for Latham’s darker impulses.
The House on the Borderland is one of his most famous works and for good reason. It begins with an isolated house and expands into something surreal, apocalyptic, and deeply unsettling.
Susanna Clarke is a superb choice for readers who enjoy intricate historical fantasy with a strong command of voice and period atmosphere. Her fiction is more measured and elegant than Latham’s pulpier adventure mode, but both authors share an interest in hidden magic beneath the surface of history.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell imagines an alternative nineteenth-century England in which practical magic returns to public life. It is richly detailed, funny, melancholy, and immersive, with an extraordinary sense of place.
Paul Tremblay is the outlier on this list in terms of setting, but he makes sense for readers who come to Mark A. Latham primarily for unease, ambiguity, and dread. Tremblay specializes in psychological horror that keeps readers uncertain about where reality ends and nightmare begins.
A Head Full of Ghosts is his most widely discussed novel, and with good reason. It explores possession, family trauma, and media exploitation in a way that is unsettling not because it gives easy answers, but because it refuses to.
