Umberto Eco' Foucault's Pendulum would be the high benchmark for this, along with Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Pérez-Reverte's The Club Dumas was also wildly fun, a hunt through antique books for occult secrets, and is in a similar vein to Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, doing the same through the Balkans for the "true history" of Vlad Tepes. On the more postmodern side, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 fits, as would many of his others, I assume (have also read GR, IV, BE). Though I don't know anything about it, I've seen Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind mentioned in this vein as well.
Any others?
(please, looking for more literary, less Dan Brown).
by Gay_For_Gary_Oldman
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David Mitchell’s books might interest you. They fit your descriptions and the other authors you mentioned, minus the conspiracy part.
(And Eco’s other novels as well of course, but I suppose you’re already familiar with these.)