67 Delightful Dark Academia Books To Read And Treasure

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This post is all about delightful dark academia books to read and treasure.

Are you searching for the best dark academia books to read? Great! You’ve come to the right place! Here you’ll find a list of 67 of the best and most highly recommended dark academia books to read right now.

What is dark academia?

According to the website Fandom, dark academia got its start in the early 2010s when people started posting mood boards on Tumblr containing visual motifs with “red brick, rusticated stone, wrought iron fencing, Gothic arches, mahogany paneling, classical columns, and generous ornamentation”. Common buildings that were reblogged were the “campuses of Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the Gloucester Cathedral; and the Victoria and Albert Museum”.

As people continued to enjoy the aesthetic, users began posting images on all the social media platforms, including Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok.

The fascination with dark academia continues to grow as it becomes more mainstream.

Studying in cafes/coffee shops are romanticized and boarding school imagery such as school uniforms, living in a dormitory, and running away has become a common theme. The photographs tend to be “dimly lit, as to give the appearance of illumination through only candlelight, a sunless day, or light being unable to reach the interiors of a deep, alcove-filled room.”

Secret societies, magic, and murder are some common themes in books labeled dark academia. Novels take place in an academic setting – high schools, boarding schools, and universities, where these schools have a prestigious reputation with elements of exclusivity. The students are of a higher socio-economic status, with mannerisms, clothing, and character concerns that reflect this.

As the genre of dark academia matures more characters in the LGBTQ+ community are being represented, attracting an even wider audience. According to Bustle, “the genre’s best books highlight everything that’s wrong with our most esteemed institutions, the people who uphold them, and the hopefuls they grind to a pulp. It’s no wonder that readers can’t get enough.”

I hope you find at least one of the following dark academia books interesting for your next read.

Table of Contents

67 Dark Academia Books Recommendations

1) THE SECRET HISTORY

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

**Read The Secret History: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

2) DEAD POETS SOCIETY

Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating has challenged them to “make your lives extraordinary! ”

Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society–a secret club where, free from the constraints and expectations of school and parents, they let their passions run wild. As Keating turns the boys on to the great words of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, they discover not only the beauty of language but the importance of making each moment count.

But the Dead Poets pledges soon realize that their newfound freedom can have tragic consequences. Can the club and the individuality it inspires survive the pressure from authorities determined to destroy their dreams?

**Read Dead Poet’s Society: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

3) NINTH HOUSE

Galaxy ‘Alex’ Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime, Alex was hoping for a fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world’s most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch.

Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale’s secret societies – well-known haunts of the rich and powerful. Now there’s a dead girl on campus and Alex seems to be the only person who won’t accept the neat answer the police and campus administration have come up with for her murder.

Because Alex knows the secret societies are far more sinister and extraordinary than anyone ever imagined. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And sometimes they prey on the living . . .

**Read Ninth House: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

4) HARRY POTTER SERIES

Harry Potter is a series that follows a boy, Harry himself, across a seven-year series of adventures culminating in the return and subsequent war against Lord Voldemort, a terrible Dark wizard who wreaked horrors upon the magical and non-magical communities alike until his unexpected and inexplicable destruction when he killed Harry’s parents and then attempted to kill Harry while he was still an infant.

Harry, growing up with his non-magical (“Muggle”) aunt and uncle, who cruelly neglect and emotionally abuse him, receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he turns eleven, whereupon he discovers that not only is there a burgeoning community of witches and wizards living and hiding in plain sight in a seemingly-ordinary 1990s British society, but that he is famous among the magical community.

They call him the “Boy Who Lived,” the cause of Voldemort’s disappearance and the end of his reign of terror. But as Harry enters the magical world and begins to learn about this new side of his life and the wonders of magic, he gets drawn into a series of perilous events that lead him closer and closer to his eventual destiny with each passing book, gradually revealing more of the truth behind what happened on the night Harry’s parents were murdered and what led to it, among other things.

**Read the Harry Potter Series: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

5) IF WE WERE VILLAINS

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.

A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, and extras.

But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.

**Read If We Were Villains: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

6) THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT

Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life, she feels herself fully in control.

By the age of sixteen, she’s competing in the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.

**Read The Queen’s Gambit: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

7) THE ATLAS SIX

Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to earn a place in the Alexandrian Society, the foremost secret society in the world. The chosen will secure a life of power and prestige beyond their wildest dreams.

But at what cost?

Each of the six newest recruits has their reasons for accepting the Society’s elusive invitation. Even if it means growing closer than they could have imagined to their most dangerous enemies― or risking unforgivable betrayal from their most trusted allies― they will fight tooth and nail for the right to join the ranks of the Alexandrians.

Even if it means they won’t all survive the year.

**Read The Atlas Six: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

8) THE SONG OF ACHILLES

A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad.

An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, and a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

**Read The Song of Achilles: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

9) THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY

Dorian Gray — handsome, clever, wretched. With his boyish good looks and charm to boot, Dorian Gray is the embodiment of refinement, grace, and allure.

As with all beautiful things, he knows his good looks will not last. That is until an artist completes a portrait of Dorian.
When Dorian sees the completed oil painting, he expresses his desire to sell his soul so that the painting would endure the normal hardships that age ravages upon beauty. And so his wish was granted, and as decades passed on by, his immorality increased but he himself never ages a day. The painting, however, has had to endure all of Dorian’s misdeeds; thus, becoming a reflection of Dorian’s true character.

**Read The Picture of Dorian Gray: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

10) WE WERE LIARS

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

**Read We Were Liars: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

11) A DEADLY EDUCATION

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans.

I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world.

At least, that’s what the world expects. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drain. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school certainly does.

But the Scholomance isn’t getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone’s idea of the shining hero, but I’m going to make it out of this place alive, and I’m not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either.

Although I’m giving serious consideration to just one.

**Read A Deadly Education: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

12) THE LAST GRADUATE

In Wisdom, Shelter. That’s the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it’s true—only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter’s rather scant.

Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students—but now that I’ve reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it’s suddenly developed a very particular craving for myself. And even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me in between grueling homework assignments, I haven’t any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.

Unless, of course, I finally accept my foretold destiny of dark sorcery and destruction. That would certainly let me sail straight out of here. The course of wisdom, surely.

But I’m not giving in—not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. I’m going to get myself and my friends out of this hideous place for good—even if it’s the last thing I do.

**Read The Last Graduate: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

13) MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

A New York Times Bestseller In an unforgettable novel that mixes spine-tingling fiction with haunting photography‚ a horrific tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob on a remote island off the coast of Wales‚ where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

As Jacob explores its abandoned rooms‚ it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar.

They may have been dangerous. And somehow ― they may still be alive.

**Read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

14) WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before.

What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff’s bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal are visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

**Read Wuthering Heights: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

15) BABEL

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

Babel is the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

**Read Babel: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

16) A LITTLE LIFE

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune.

While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by unspeakable childhood trauma.

A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.

**Read A Little Life: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

17) THE HISTORIAN

suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family’s past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages.

The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe—in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, and so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world.

**Read The Historian: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

18) THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

**Read The Invisible life of Addie LaRue: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

19) CATHERINE HOUSE

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price.

Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, and even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.

**Read Catherine House: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

20) WHERE THE CRAWDAD SINGS

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Read Where the Crawdad Sings: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Bookshop

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How many books have you read, only to forget the tiny details that made the book so special? You search, you read Amazon reviews, and you ask friends for recommendations; but eventually, you forget about the compelling plot, that favorite quote, or the new word you discovered while reading a book. Don’t miss the chance to record all the important details again.

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21) A SEPARATE PEACE

Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence.

Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

**Read A Separate Peace: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

22) FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who through a strangely unorthodox experiment creates a grotesque yet sentient being. Victor, repulsed by the thing that he has created, abandons the monster. The creature in turn saddened by this rejection departs as well. What follows is a series of tragic events.

There is no greater novel in the monster genre than Frankenstein and no more well-known monster than the one that is at the center of this novel. However, the monster of Frankenstein is more than the common lumbering moronic giant that is most often represented.

Frankenstein’s monster is in reality a thinking intelligent being who is tormented by a world in which he does not belong. In this depiction, Shelley draws upon the universal human themes of creation, the nature of existence, and the need for acceptance. For it is without this acceptance that the true monster, the violent nature of humanity, emerges.

**Read Frankenstein: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

23) REAL LIFE

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood.

For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.

**Read Real Life: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

24) SLEEPWALKING

Sleepwalking tells the story of the three notorious “death girls,” so-called on the Swarthmore campus because they dress in black and are each absorbed in the work and suicide of a different poet: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Wolitzer’s creation Lucy Asher, a gifted writer who drowned herself at twenty-four. At night the death girls gather in a candlelit room to read their heroines’ work aloud.

But an affair with Julian, an upperclassman, pushes sensitive, struggling Claire Danziger—she of the Lucy Asher obsession-–to consider to what degree her “death girl” identity is really who she is.

As she grapples with her feelings for Julian, her own understanding of herself and her past begins to shift uncomfortably and even disturbingly.

Finally, Claire takes drastic measures to confront the facts about herself that she has been avoiding for years.

**Read Sleepwalking: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

25) THE LESSONS

In The Lessons a close-knit group of friends forms at Oxford around the mercurial, charismatic figure of Mark, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and dangerously unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous.

After graduation the group fragments, each locked in his or her own suddenly adult, pedestrian world.

But Mark’s influence is still strong…

**Read The Lessons: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

26) THE RACHEL PAPERS

In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable — and curiously touching — adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction.

On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel — a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.

**Read The Rachel Papers: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

27) BUNNY

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other “Bunny,” and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled “Smut Salon,” and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process.

As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus “Workshop” where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into a deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

**Read The Bunny: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

28) POSSESSION

Winner of England’s Booker Prize and a literary sensation, Possession traces the lives of a pair of young academics as they uncover a clandestine relationship between two long-dead Victorian poets.

As they unearth their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.

**Read Possession: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

POSSIBILITY PRESS READING JOURNAL

How many books have you read, only to forget the details that made the book so special? You spend time searching for each book, reading Amazon reviews before purchasing, and even asking your friends for recommendations, but after reading it you soon forget about that compelling plot, favorite quote, or new word you discovered. Here’s your opportunity to track and review your next 52 books.

This beautiful, professionally designed reading journal is the perfect place to store your treasured memories experienced through the books you read, so you can keep coming back to them again and again for years to come.

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29) THE MAGUS

A young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching post on a remote Greek island in order to escape an unsatisfactory love affair. There, his friendship with a reclusive millionaire evolves into a mysterious–and deadly–game of violence, seduction, and betrayal.

As he is drawn deeper into the trickster’s psychological traps, Nicholas finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish past from present, fantasy from reality. He becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his very survival.

John Fowles expertly unfolds a spellbinding exploration of the complexities of the human mind. By turns disturbing, thrilling, and seductive, The Magus is a masterwork of contemporary literature.

**Read The Magus: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

30) THE LIKENESS

*Starred Review* French’s debut novel, In the Woods (2007), introduced Dublin Murder Squad detective Cassie Maddox and earned unanimous critical praise.

Cassie is back, and French has written another winner. The body of a young woman is found in the ruins of a old stone cottage in a dying village outside of Dublin, and the dead woman and Cassie are virtual twins. Lacking suspects or leads, the victim is reported by the police to be injured but alive, leaving Cassie to step into the dead woman’s life as a Trinity College graduate student and the housemate of four other students.

Despite the tensions of being undercover, Cassie quickly learns to love her quirky, insular housemates and her new life in a once-grand house, even as the Murder Squad investigation yields little. Someone stabbed her doppelganger to death, and Cassie must find the killer.

The Likeness has everything: memorable characters, crisp dialogue, shrewd psychological insight, mounting tension, a palpable sense of place, and wonderfully evocative, painterly prose. In the Woods was an Edgar Award finalist; this one just might go one step further. –Thomas Gaughan

**Read The Likeness: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

31) CONFESSIONS

After calling off her engagement in the wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, a four-year-old child, Manami. Now, following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation.

But first, she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that upends everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers and sets in motion a diabolical plot for revenge.

Narrated in alternating voices, with twists you’ll never see coming, Confessions probes the limits of punishment, despair, and tragic love, culminating in a harrowing confrontation between teacher and student that will place the occupants of an entire school in danger. You’ll never look at a classroom the same way again.

**Read Confessions: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

32) THE LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES

Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson fled the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. The week before her graduation, in that sheltered wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden in the depths of Heart Lake for more than two decades.

Now Jane has returned to the school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start with her young daughter. But ominous messages from the past dredge up forgotten memories. And young, troubled girls are beginning to die again–as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface. . . .

**Read The Lake of Dead Languages: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

33) THE LIE TREE

Faith Sunderly leads a double life. To most people, she is modest and well-mannered—a proper young lady who knows her place. But inside, Faith is burning with questions and curiosity. She keeps a sharp watch on her surroundings and, therefore, knows secrets no one suspects her of knowing—like the real reason her family fed Kent to the close-knit island of Vane. And that her father’s death was no accident.

In pursuit of revenge and justice for the father she idolizes, Faith hunts through his possessions, where she discovers a strange tree. A tree that bears fruit only when she whispers a lie to it. The fruit, in turn, delivers a hidden truth. The tree might hold the key to her father’s murder. Or, it might lure the murderer directly to Faith herself, for lies—like fires, wild and crackling—quickly take on a life of their own.

**Read The Lie Tree: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

34) THEY WISH THEY WERE US

In Gold Coast, Long Island, everything from the expensive downtown shops to the manicured beaches, to the pressed uniforms of Jill Newman and her friends, looks perfect. But as Jill found out three years ago, nothing is as it seems.

During freshman year Jill’s best friend, the brilliant, dazzling Shaila Arnold, was killed by her boyfriend. After that dark night on the beach, Graham confessed, the case was closed, and Jill tried to move on.

Now, it’s Jill’s senior year and she’s determined to make it her best yet. After all, she’s a senior and a Player–a member of Gold Coast Prep’s exclusive, not-so-secret secret society. Senior Players have the best parties, the highest grades, and the admiration of the entire school. This is going to be Jill’s year. She’s sure of it.

But when Jill starts getting texts proclaiming Graham’s innocence, her dreams of the perfect senior year start to crumble. If Graham didn’t kill Shaila, who did? Jill vows to find out, but digging deeper could mean putting her friendships, and her future, in jeopardy.

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35) THE NAME OF THE STAR

The day that Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London to start a new life at boarding school is also the day a series of brutal murders breaks out over the city, killings mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper spree of more than a century ago.

Soon “Rippermania” takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses.

Except one.

Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him–the only one who can see him. And now Rory has become his next target.

In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities.

**Read The Name of the Star: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

36) TRULY DEVIOUS

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth-century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing method of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes in American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.

But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

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37) THE BONE HOUSES

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn (“Ryn”) only cares about two things: her family and her family’s graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don’t always stay dead.

The risen corpses are known as “bone houses,” and legend says that they’re the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good?

Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the deeply-buried truths about themselves. Equal parts classic horror novel and original fairy tale, The Bone Houses will have you spellbound from the very first page.

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38) NADA

Andrea, an eighteen-year-old orphan, moves in with her volatile Barcelona relatives to attend the local University. Living in genteel squalor in a mysterious house on Calle de Aribau, Andrea relies on her wealthy, beautiful, bohemian friend Ena to prove that normal life exists beyond the gothic dwelling she calls home.

In one year, as her innocence melts away, Andrea learns the truth about her overbearing and religious Aunt Angustias, her cruelly sensual, musically gifted uncle Román and his violent brother Juan, and her lovely Aunt Gloria, who provides the family’s bread with furtive gambling expeditions. She also learns the truth about Ena—and why her friendship goes hand in hand with her interest in Andrea’s family.

Peppered with dark humor, energy, and hope, Carmen Laforet’s stunning classic is the story of a young woman who endures the harsh realities of post-Civil War Barcelona, emerging wiser and stronger, and with a bright future ahead of her.

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39) WOMEN IN LOVE

Women in Love, the novel that D. H. Lawrence considered his best, is a powerful portrayal of two couples dynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other, and with life’s intractable limitations.

The sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, whom we first met in Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow, here become involved with two close friends: Rupert, an intellectual school inspector; and Gerald, the wealthy heir to a mine owner.

The turbulent relationships that result—chronicled with an emotional and sexual frankness that provoked controversy on the book’s publication in 1920—take the characters from an English landscape of coal mines and sooty factories to the snowy heights of the Alps, where tragedy strikes.

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40) THE DISPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:

Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.

No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:

Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

**Read The Disputable History of Landau-Banks: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

41) OLEANNA

This play is an electrifying two-hander, set in an American university.

Carol is a failing student who copies down all the notes in lectures but doesn’t understand what they mean. John is the lecturer who makes his own rules and patronizes his students.

When he tries to fob Carol off with an A so she’ll stop annoying him, she misinterprets his intentions. A seemingly innocent pat on the shoulder leads to a complaint of sexual harassment. What follows is a power struggle between the sexes, classes, and generations.

Carol and John argue over the use of language and the purpose of education.

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42) THE YEAR OF THE GADFLY

Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species.

But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

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43) THE STARLESS SEA

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood.

Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction.

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44) I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN

At first, Jude and her twin brother are Noah and Jude; inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, and cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them.

Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor.

The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world.

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45) MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN DOCTOR

Rebelling against the constraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men. Her encounters with the other students as well as the male and female corpses in the autopsy room—intensify her dissatisfaction with and search for identity. She realizes men are not gods as her mother had taught her, that science cannot explain everything, and that she cannot be satisfied by living a life purely of the mind.

After a brief and unhappy marriage, she throws herself into her work, becoming a successful physician, but at the same time, she becomes aware of injustice and hypocrisy in society. Fulfillment and love come to her at last in a wholly unexpected way.

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46) SEASONS OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country.

Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.

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47) GAUDY NIGHT

When Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion, known as the Gaudy, the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies, and poison-pen letters, including one that says, “Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup.”

Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection, and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey.

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48) THE RAVEN BOYS

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them–until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her. His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school.

Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn’t believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

**Read The Raven Boys: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | BookShop**

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49) THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to “her girls,” the students she selects to be her crème de la crème.

Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy—is “famous for something,” and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, “Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me.”

And they do. But one of them will betray her.

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50) THE TRUANTS

Jess Walker has come to a concrete campus under the flat gray skies of East Anglia for one reason: to be taught by the mesmerizing and rebellious Dr. Lorna Clay, whose seminars soon transform Jess’s thinking on life, love, and Agatha Christie.

Swept up in Lorna’s thrall, Jess falls in with a tightly knit group of rule-breakers–until the dynamic among the friends begins to darken.

When a tragedy shatters their friendships and love affairs and reveals a terrible secret, Jess must face the question she fears most: What is the true cost of an extraordinary life?

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51) THE DIVINES

The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys, and chain-smoking cigarettes. They were fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued, and cuttingly humorous in the way that only teenage girls can be. For Josephine, now in her thirties, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace.

Yet now Josephine inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. Ruminating on the past, Josephine becomes obsessed with her teenage identity and the forgotten girls of her one-time orbit. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s scandal. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels, derailing not just her marriage and career, but her entire sense of self.

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52) GORMENGHAST

A gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, and death. Steerpike, who began his climb across the roofs when Titus was born, is now ascending the spiral staircase to the heart of the castle, and in his wake lie imprisonment, manipulation, and murder.

Gormenghast is the second volume in Mervyn Peake’s widely acclaimed trilogy, but it is much more than a sequel to Titus Groan―it is an enrichment and deepening of that book. At this very moment, a new generation of fantasy fans is growing to love this masterpiece that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable feats of imaginative writing.

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53) VICIOUS

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates―brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find―aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge―but who will be left alive at the end?

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54) GHOSTS OF HARVARD

Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia took his own life there the year before. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers.

As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies—but what tipped him over the edge? Voices fill her head, seemingly belonging to three ghosts who passed through the university in life or death, and whose voices, dreams, and terrors still echo the halls. Among them is a person whose name has been buried for centuries, and another whose name mankind will never forget.

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55) THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS

The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery. A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city in chaos.

Juliette Cai is the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang – a network of criminals far above the law. Roma Montagov is the prodigal son of her greatest rivals, the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. He is also Juliette’s first love . . . and first betrayal.

When a deadly madness strikes gangsters on both sides, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, and a monster in the shadows. And as the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns – and grudges – aside and work together. For if they can’t stop this mayhem, there will be no city left to rule.

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56) A LESSON IN VENGEANCE

Felicity Morrow is back at the Dalloway School. Perched in the Catskill Mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to finish high school. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds.

Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s past. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind now, but it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.

It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she has already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called method writer. She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity to help her research the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource.

And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway—and herself.

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57) THE MAIDENS

Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike―particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything―including her own life.

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58) HOW WE FALL APART

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, a top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “the Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow the Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

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59) PLAIN BAD HEROINES

Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society.

They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets.

Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

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60) WILDER GIRLS

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.

It started slow. First, the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

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61) THE STRANGER DIARIES

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she even teaches a course on him. But when one of Clare’s colleagues is found dead, with a line from Holland’s iconic story “The Stranger” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with her favorite literature.

The police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her diary, the only outlet for her suspicions and fears. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn’t hers, left on the page of an old diary: Hallo Clare. You don’t know me.

Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger” has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?

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62) THE GIRLS ARE ALL SO NICE HERE

A lot has changed in the years since Ambrosia Wellington graduated from college, and she’s worked hard to create a new life for herself. But then an invitation to her ten-year reunion arrives in the mail, along with an anonymous note that reads, “We need to talk about what we did that night.”

It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything.

At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused—the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding. And it was all because of the game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else and the girl who paid the price.

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63) THE LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN

Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing– a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.

But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil’s Bible. The text of the Devil’s Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell….and Earth.

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64) THE BROKEN GIRLS

Vermont, 1950. There’s a place for the girls whom no one wants—the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the ones too smart for their own good. It’s called Idlewild Hall, and local legend says the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their friendship blossoming—until one of them mysteriously disappears….

Vermont, 2014. Twenty years ago, journalist Fiona Sheridan’s elder sister’s body was found in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And although her sister’s boyfriend was tried and convicted of the murder, Fiona can’t stop revisiting the events, unable to shake the feeling that something was never right about the case.

When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during renovations links the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past—and a voice that won’t be silenced….

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65) CONVERSION

It’s senior year, and St. Joan’s Academy is a pressure cooker. Grades, college applications, boys’ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends keep it together. Until the school’s queen bee suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class.

The mystery illness spreads to the school’s popular clique, then more students, and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s buzzes with rumor; rumor erupts into full-blown panic.

Everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Are the girls faking? Only Colleen—who’s been reading The Crucible for extra credit—comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .

Inspired by true events—from seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high school—Conversion casts a spell.

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66) ONE OF US IS LYING

Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.

Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is an all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

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67) THE TEMPLE HOUSE VANISHING

Louisa is the new scholarship student at Temple House, a drafty, imposing cliffside boarding school full of girls as chilly as the mansion itself. There is one other outsider, an intense and compelling student provocateur named Victoria, and the two girls form a fierce bond. But their friendship is soon unsettled by a young art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, whose charismatic presence ignites tension and obsession in the cloistered world of the school.

Then one day, Louisa and Mr. Lavelle vanish without a trace, never to be found. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disappearance, one journalist—a woman who grew up on the same street as Louisa—delves into the past, determined to uncover the truth. She finds stories of jealousy and revenge, power and class. But might she find Louisa and Mr. Lavelle, too?

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Dark Academia Book Recommendations

I hope that after you’ve viewed these 67 delightful dark academia book recommendations you’ve found at least one new book that you can read and treasure. I admit this is not an exhaustive list. That’s the wonderful thing about books though, isn’t it? There are always new ones to discover and read! So I’ll be updating this list as time allows or maybe even making new lists divided into sub-genres. We’ll see!

Feel free to let me know in the comments which one(s) you’ve read already and what you’re reading now. I’d love to hear from you!

Source:

Christine. (October 11, 2022). 30 Best Dark Academia Books To Get Your Heart Racing. The Uncorked Librarian. Retrieved from: https://www.theuncorkedlibrarian.com/best-dark-academia-books/

Colyard, CW. (April 8, 2022). The Best Dark Academia Books To Read This Year. Bustle. Retrieved from: https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/best-dark-academia-books

Goodreads. (n.d.) Dark Academia. Retrieved from: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/dark-academia

Heath, Will. (October 18, 2022). 18 Delectable Dark Academia Books. Books and Bao. Retrieved from: https://booksandbao.com/must-read-dark-academia-books/

Lawson, Liz. (December 8, 2021). The 10 Best Dark Academia Books. Paste Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/dark-academia/the-10-best-dark-academia-books/

Martin, Emily. (July 25, 2022). The best Dark Academia Books, According To Goodreads. Book Riot. Retrieved from: https://bookriot.com/dark-academia-goodreads/

Miller, Brandon. (n.d.). 11 Gripping Dark Academia Books. Celadon Books. Retrieved from: https://celadonbooks.com/booklists/dark-academia-books/

Moreno, Robyn. (October 10, 2022). 20 Dark Academia Books You’ll Be Totally Obsessed With. Reader’s Digest. Retrieved from: https://www.rd.com/list/dark-academia-books/

TheReadDown. (n.d.) Essential Dark Academia Books. Penguin Random House. Retrieved from: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/the-read-down/essential-dark-academia-books/

Whittaker, Alexandra. (December 27, 2021). The 15 Best Dark Academia Books of All Time, Including but Not Limited to ‘The Secret History’. Cosmopolitan. Retrieved from: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/books/g37888400/best-dark-academia-books/