11 Dark Academia Books That Major in the Perfect Amount of Suspense and Fantasy
Here's what to read to get into the school spirit, whether you're headed back to campus or not.
When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.
We don’t make the rules: Back-to-school season unofficially marks the start of fall, even if your cute new cardigan is to combat the blasting A.C., rather than crisp autumn air. Regardless, there are still plenty of other cozy delights to help you start feeling the school spirit—like sinking your teeth into a dark academia novel.
These creepy books typically feature a school (bonus points if it’s haunted) and students untangling—or covering up—knotty crimes all before the first bell of the day. With the delectable blend of old-world lore, dreary backdrops, and a Shakespeare reference or two, dark academia novels are ideal for getting into the swing of the school year.
Fortunately, this genre has something for everyone. From realistic plots to others that include communing with the uncanny, all of these books will have you wondering what’s scarier: figuring out who to eat lunch with or facing down a poltergeist.
From grad students with a flair for witchcraft and a podcaster solving mysteries at her alma mater, these dark academia novels are heavy on suspense—and don’t skimp on the drama, either. Below, check out some of the top dark academia novels to read now.
If the rumors are true, creative writing MFA programs can be a total nightmare. At least that’s the case for Sam, a creative writing student at esteemed Warren University, who’s become ostracized from the rest of her small class. She has nothing in common with them. For one, her classmates are gussied-up girly girls who call themselves, and each other, Bunny.
But then, with a new semester underway, the Bunnies invite Sam to one of their “Smut Salons.” There, she learns the Bunnies are revising a lot more than their latest assignments. Soon, Sam falls down the rabbit hole, abandoning her close friends, her work, and potentially her future, all to fit in with the Bunnies.
Straddling magical realism and horror, Bunny is at once a surreal satire of elite MFA programs and the people who attend them, while confronting the terror of pursuing a life in the arts. But Sam’s story doesn’t end there. We Love You, Bunny, Mona Awad’s newest release, returns to the Bunny-verse, which catches up with Sam and hops into the Bunnies’s origin stories.
Extra credit if you knew this iconic film could also be enjoyed in book form. Based on the movie’s screenplay, Dead Poets Society recounts the story of groundbreaking Professor Keating, who encourages his students at an all-boys’s school to question convention and the forces that wish them to conform. Influenced by their teacher, a handful of students begin the Dead Poets Society, a club for pledges to evade the pressures of masculinity and find refuge in the words of groundbreaking poets.
At a time of peak toxic masculinity, Dead Poets Society serves as a reminder of the strength in vulnerability and the calamities that can follow if neglected. Read this to relive this stunning story all over again.
In this novel, the monster isn’t hiding under the bed. He’s leading the boys’s choir. Fee, a Korean-American boy in Maine, has recently joined the local chorus thanks to his stunning voice. Then, he's silenced. Abused by Big Eric, the choir director, as many of the boys have been, Fee remains quiet until a peer comes forward, unveiling the extent of the choir director’s malevolence.
Though Eric is arrested, the impact of his abuse is pervasive, haunting Fee and his friends, causing several of them to die by suicide. With so much trauma, Fee flings himself into unhealthy coping skills. Over time, Fee grows up and distances himself from his vices.
He even accepts a teaching job at a boarding school. There, he meets a boy who has a striking resemblance to one of his dead friends. As Fee gets to know this student, he realizes they’re more connected than he thought, and Fee is presented with an opportunity to heal from his past while helping his student.
A moving, heart-wrenching story, Edinburgh is a master class in how beautiful prose can be wielded to describe brutality. Given the subject matter, this book may not be right for everyone, though with his impressive characters, churning plot, and breadcrumbed surprises, Edinburgh is one you’ll return to time after time. Check this out if your copy of A Little Life is falling apart and you need something else to pick up.
Many have tried to write a podcast novel, but few have succeeded. One of the rare authors to accomplish the task is Rebecca Makkai with I Have Some Questions For You, which skewers the very topic that drives the story forward. Bodie Kane, a respected podcaster and film professor, has come a long way from her years at the Granby School, the exclusive New England boarding school from which she graduated.
Back on campus to teach a course on podcasting, Bodie tasks her students to come up with a podcast idea. So, when one of her students resurfaces a crime that occurred at Granby, to Bodie’s roommate no less, Bodie is thrown by the possibility that a man has been sitting in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. And so, Bodie embarks on uncovering the truth, once and for all.
With a subject that’s all too prescient, from culture’s appetite for consuming tragedy for entertainment to systemic racism, I Have Some Questions For You bellows with suspense without feeling heavy-handed.
R.F. Kuang is no stranger to putting a twist on dark academia. After achieving major success with Babel, the author is headed back to school with her latest release, Katabasis. Meet Alice Law, a star student of Magick at Cambridge University. Motivated doesn’t even begin to describe Alice, who has put everything on the line to study under esteemed Professor Grimes. Then she, low-key, kinda kills him, sending him to Hell, instantly becoming the opposite of a teacher’s pet.
To stop the train wreck she set in motion, and to get her hands on a coveted recommendation letter from Grimes, Alice must use all the skills she’s learned to rescue him. But it's not quite that easy. With an academic foe determined to keep her from acquiring the rec and the unpredictability of dealing with, literally, Hell, Alice has to wield magic unlike any time before. She can only hope it’s enough.
Can’t wait for more episodes of Wednesday? Pick up this creepy dark academia read while you pass the time. Tucked away in the Catskills Mountains is the Dalloway School, which is no stranger to tragedy. Just ask Felicity Morrow, who’s finally back at school after the horrific death of her girlfriend.
The school has seen its share of devastating events. It was the site of the Dalloway Five, after all, in which five girls (maybe witches) died under strange circumstances at Godwin dorm, the same dorm that Felicity calls home. Inevitably, rumors swirl.
Like the one that suggests magic is Dalloway’s legacy. Felicity wants to ignore the gossip, keeping her eye on graduation. So, when a new student is keen to investigate the Dalloway Five, Felicity finds herself torn between helping solve the mystery and burying her head until the end of term. That is, until a crisis forces her to make a choice she won’t be able to come back from.
A secret society named after Persephone, the Greek goddess of death? That’s just the tip of the iceberg in this novel by Alex Michaelides, author behind the #BookTok-favorite, The Silent Patient. Set at Cambridge University, The Maidens is a private club of young women who idolize not only Greek mythology, but also one of their professors, Edward Fosca. But something about this group, and the man at the center of it, doesn’t sit right with Mariana Andros, a therapist who’s returned to her old stomping grounds to support her niece, who’s grieving after her best friend is killed.
Then, another young woman winds up dead, causing Mariana to investigate the ongoings of The Maidens, convinced that Edward is behind the tragedy. But, with her own demons troubling her, Mariana has a herculean feat set out for her if she’s going to solve the mystery.
If you prefer your dark academia with a dose of dystopia, allow Never Let Me Go to be your next read. At Hailsham, a British boarding school, Kathy H. and her friends are like any other group of kids: They play soccer, make art, and experience their first crushes. However, unlike other boarding school students, Kathy and her classmates can’t leave; instead, they rely on their teachers to help them understand the outside world. And their purpose: to make donations. As the group graduates from Hailsham, their duties become clearer, as do the ramifications of such jobs. So, as Kathy and her closest friends begin their assignments, they become obsessed with searching for alternative paths outside of what’s been set for them.
Fully engrossing and unlike anything else, Never Let Me Go will leave you thinking about its message and the characters, long after you’ve finished (and reread it, which you’ll undoubtedly do countless times).
Nothing says dark academia like a secret society. Enter Yale University’s Lethe House, the ninth secret society responsible for overseeing the dark magic practiced at the other eight societies, or houses. Recently, Lethe House welcomed a new addition, Alex Stern, an unlikely recruit lifted from a difficult past and planted in the upper echelon of academia.
As Alex finds her footing at Yale, she also must settle into her role as Lethe’s newest Dante, or supervisor tasked with keeping the other societies in check. Guided by Darlington, her Virgil (like a student version of Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Alex not only has to keep an eye on a bunch of spoiled students wielding their power, but also juggle unruly ghosts before anyone gets hurt. Or disappears. Like Darlington has.
To retrieve him, Alex gets swept up in solving not one, but two murders (O.K., overachiever, we see you!), while righting wrongs everywhere she turns. But as she gets closer to solving the puzzles, she finds herself confronted with danger by human and supernatural forces alike.
Whether you’re an avid fantasy fan or looking to switch things up, Ninth House is an immersive story that will have you gasping and guessing with every page. Once you’re finished, pick up Hell Bent, the sequel, to find out what comes of Lethe House and its members.
A cursory TikTok search for “dark academia” will surface more than a few homages to Donna Tartt’s debut novel, The Secret History. Arguably one of the pillars of the genre, Tartt fittingly completed the book before she graduated from college.
The novel centers on a group of classics majors at an elite (read: isolated) New England college. Think snowy landscapes, Greek mythology, and murder. Unspooled in what would become Tartt’s trademark Dickensian prose, The Secret History is at once a campus novel and a twisty thriller delivered by one of fiction’s finest.
Need a study break? Listen to the podcast, "Once Upon a Time…at Bennington College" by Lili Anolik (also author of Didion & Babitz). In the pod, Anolik delves into the legendary Bennington class, which included not just Donna Tartt, but also Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem. Was something in the water that year? Or did the three burgeoning literary icons spur each other to succeed? This investigation surfaces the truth behind the gossip.
This novel is like a mix of Yellowjackets, Lost, and Station Eleven. The isolation was one of the drawbacks of the Raxter School for Girls in Rory Power's futuristic novel, but it's now probably the thing that’s spared them from "the Tox." Despite its remote location, the illness has invaded the school, claiming the lives of everyone but three friends who are left waiting on a cure, but are terrified to leave the safety of the school.
When one of the trio goes missing, everything is turned upside down. In their search, the girls find so much more than their friend. With a thrumming plot and endearing characters, this is an ideal book club pick. You’ll be dying to dish on the surprises that you won’t see coming.
