Dark Academia

These twisty novels delve into the dangers of intellectual curiosity, whether from competition, conspiracy, or something else unexpected.

Showing 1 - 20 of 23  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Dark rooms"
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"Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly--a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession--but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which she recently graduated,...
Book cover for "Hell bent"
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Series:
Alex Stern volume 2.
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Alex Stern returns in New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo's Hell Bent, another tale of murder and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite. Galaxy "Alex" Stern is determined to break Darlington out of hell--even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. But Alex is playing with forces far beyond her control, and when faculty members begin to die off, she knows these aren't just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven,...
Book cover for "Killingly"
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"Bertha Mellish, 'the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl' at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha's panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha's best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine,...
Book cover for "Shady Hollow"
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony--until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter...
Book cover for "The masterpiece"
Star rating for The masterpiece
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"For the nearly nine million people who live in New York City, Grand Central Terminal is a crown jewel, a masterpiece of design. But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. For Clara, the terminal is the stepping stone to her future, which she is certain will shine as brightly as the constellations on the main concourse ceiling. It is 1928, and twenty-five-year-old Clara is teaching at the lauded Grand Central...
Book cover for "The Temple House vanishing"
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The disappearance of a brilliant scholarship student and a young, charismatic teacher from an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Ireland is an unsolved mystery that has captivated the whole country. Year after year the media revisit it, and the conspiracy theories persist. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disappearances, a journalist who grew up on the same street as the missing girl delves into the past to write a series of articles...
Book cover for "The shards"
Star rating for The shards
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city"--
Book cover for "Good girls lie"
Star rating for Good girls lie
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
J.T. Ellison's pulse-pounding new psychological thriller examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to in order to protect their secrets.
Goode girls don't lie...
Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential,...
Book cover for "Magic for liars"
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "The woman in the library"
Star rating for The woman in the library
Average Rating:
3.1 stars
Description:
"The beautifully ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is completely silent one weekday morning, until a woman's terrified scream echoes through the room. Security guards immediately appear and instruct everyone inside to stay put until they determine there is no threat. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers who had been sitting in the reading room get to chatting and quickly become friendly. Harriet, Marigold, Whit, and Caine...
Book cover for "The stranger diaries"
Star rating for The stranger diaries
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Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare's colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R.M. Holland's most famous story, 'The stranger,' left by her body. Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favorite literature. To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer...
Book cover for "Little comfort"
Star rating for Little comfort
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Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Usually, she's hired to find long-ago prom dates or to reunite adopted children and birth parents. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine"--Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "The Raven scholar"
Star rating for The Raven scholar
Series:
Eternal path volume 1.
Description:
"Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, the reign of Bersun the Brusque has come to an end. In the dizzying heat of midsummer, seven exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists compete to replace him. When one of them is murdered, it falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor's brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer and fight for the throne. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help--all...
Book cover for "Lesson in red"
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"A companion to Still lives ... this savvy thriller exposes dark questions about power and the art world and reveals the fatal mistakes that can befall those who threaten its status quo ... Brenae Brasil is a rising star at Los Angeles Art College, the most prestigious art school in the country, and her path to art world celebrity is all but assured. Until she is found dead on campus, just after completing a provocative documentary about female bodies,...
Book cover for "The poison grove"
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"Betrayal is a bitter poison . . . After a nerve-racking investigation, Professor Eustacia Rose's life is returning to normal. She is finally back teaching at UCL and her relationship with Matilde is blossoming. But when a man is found dead with a needle in his neck, and a disturbing painting of Eustacia links her and the body, her fragile peace suddenly begins to crumble. At work, there's another threat for Eustacia to deal with. A PhD student is...
Book cover for "Never saw me coming"
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Average Rating:
2.8 stars
Book cover for "Picnic at Hanging Rock"
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"A 50th-anniversary edition of the haunting novel about the disappearance of three boarding school girls that inspired the acclaimed film ... It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping....
Book cover for "A dangerous duet"
Star rating for A dangerous duet
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Nineteen-year-old Nell Hallam lives in a modest corner of Mayfair with her brother Matthew, an inspector at Scotland Yard. An exceptionally talented pianist, she aspires to attend the Royal Academy; but with tuition beyond their means, Nell sets out to earn the money herself--by playing piano in a popular Soho music hall. And the fact that she will have to disguise herself as a man and slip out at night to do it doesn't deter her. Spending evenings...
Book cover for "A dark and drowning tide"
Star rating for A dark and drowning tide
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"A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic."--
Book cover for "The cartographers"
Star rating for The cartographers
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"What is the purpose of a map? Nell Young's whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell's personal hero. But she hasn't seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless...