Dark Academia

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

Showing 1 - 18 of 18  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Where sleeping girls lie"
Star rating for Where sleeping girls lie
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears."--
Book cover for "Killingly"
Star rating for Killingly
Description:
"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 "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"
Star rating for The Temple House vanishing
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 "Little comfort"
Star rating for Little comfort
Series:
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 department of rare books and special collections"
Star rating for The department of rare books and special collections
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Liesl Weiss has been (mostly) happy working in the rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing. Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book but is told repeatedly to keep quiet to keep the...
Book cover for "All these beautiful strangers"
Star rating for All these beautiful strangers
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"One summer day, Grace Fairchild ... vanished from the family's lake house without a trace, leaving behind her seven-year old daughter, Charlie ... Years later, ... Charlie still struggles with the dark legacy of her family name and the mystery surrounding her mother. Determined to finally let go of the past, she throws herself into life at Knollwood, the prestigious New England school she attends [and] quickly becomes friends with Knollwoods 'it'...
Book cover for "That's not my name"
Star rating for That's not my name
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Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Told in two voices, a seventeen-year-old battered and bruised girl struggles to remember who she or the man claiming to be her father is while seventeen-year-old Drew stops at nothing to find his missing girlfriend"--
Book cover for "Picnic at Hanging Rock"
Star rating for Picnic at Hanging Rock
Description:
"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 "The bequest"
Star rating for The bequest
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"After her professor's suspicious death, a PhD student uncovers dark machinations among her academic associates in this 'richly atmospheric and irresistibly readable' (Joyce Carol Oates) Gothic mystery set between Scotland, Italy, and France."--
Book cover for "Tell me I'm an artist"
Star rating for Tell me I'm an artist
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"At her San Francisco art school, Joey enrolls in a film elective that requires her to complete what seems like a straightforward assignment: create a self-portrait. Joey inexplicably decides to remake Wes Anderson's Rushmore despite having never seen the movie. As Tell Me I'm An Artist unfolds over the course of the semester, the assignment hangs over her as she struggles to exist in a well-heeled world that is hugely different from any she has known....
Book cover for "You belong here"
Star rating for You belong here
Description:
"Beckett Bowery never thought she'd return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett's parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else--until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again. For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then...
Book cover for "The bewitching"
Star rating for The bewitching
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"'Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches'. That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva--stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that's why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers...
Book cover for "Her daughter's mother"
Star rating for Her daughter's mother
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In this gripping and emotional domestic suspense debut for fans of The Perfect Mother, a newly pregnant woman inadvertently befriends her egg donor--only to find herself a key suspect when the woman vanishes without a trace"--
Book cover for "Graveyard shift"
Star rating for Graveyard shift
Author:
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story. One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn't there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for...

16. Enigma

Book cover for "Enigma"
Star rating for Enigma
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"Salem Salazar is a Mortimer University legacy and the black sheep of her scandal-ridden, wealthy family. Obsessed with death, she arrives at Mortimer on the hunt for answers about what happened to her perfect, missing older sister. There, she discovers that her sister is far from the only girl to have gone missing at Mortimer. Salem will do anything to discover what dark forces are killing Mortimer's students... even if it means using herself as...
Book cover for "A mastery of monsters"
Star rating for A mastery of monsters
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Description:
"When August's brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks the stress of college got to him. But August knows her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing. The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and protect their remaining family. And after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother...
Book cover for "In these hallowed halls"
Star rating for In these hallowed halls
Description:
A "collection of twelve dark academia short stories... In these stories, dear student, retribution visits a lothario lecturer; the sinister truth is revealed about a missing professor; a forsaken lover uses a seance for revenge; an obsession blooms about a possible illicit affair; two graduates exhume the secrets of a reclusive scholar; horrors are uncovered in an obscure academic department; five hopeful initiates must complete a murderous task and...