Dark Academia
If you like your fiction with a side of unsettling campus life, these books are for you! A mix of fantasy, science fiction, horror, thrillers, and realistic fiction, all with a dark academia aesthetic. (Created July 2025)
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The Atlas Six
Dangerous intrigues and deadly secrets swirl around six ambitious young magicians competing for entry into a secret society. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
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And He Shall Appear
From a mesmerizing new literary voice comes a story of obsessive friendship, chilling powers, and untimely death for readers of dark academia classics. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Society of Lies
When her sister Naomi, about to graduate from Princeton, is found dead on campus, Maya, believing it was no accident, discovers Naomi joined the same underground society she did years ago and now every clue is leading her back to the past--and to the secrets she's kept all these years. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Plain Bad Heroines
To say that the Brookhaunts School for Girls has a cursed history would be an understatement of outrageous proportions, but watching that history unfold in Danforth's immersive novel is a creepy pleasure from start to finish. (Library Journal)
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Availability: Available
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The Things We Do to Our Friends
Studying at the University of Edinburgh, Clare, yearning to reinvent herself, becomes friends with Tabitha, an intimidatingly rich girl, and her exclusive circle, but when Tabitha needs her help on a special little project, Clare starts to realize too late what her friends are capable of. (NoveList)
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The Two Doctors Górski
Set in a fictional British university on par with Oxbridge, this dark, tactile novella from Lambda Award winner Fellman seamlessly weaves inventive magic into a recognizable world of brutally competitive academia. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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An Academy for Liars
A young woman with a gift for persuasion, Lennon Carter, is invited to take an entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret part of Savannah, where she learns how to master her strange power. (NoveList)
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The Library at Hellebore
What happens when students at a school for the paranormal decide that enough is enough?...A secret history that toys with the mythos of dark academia while reveling in its excesses. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Katabasis
When Cambridge professor and magician Jacob Grimes dies in an accident, his grad students Alice and Peter descend into Hell after him. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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I Have Some Questions for You
Beloved novelist Makkai follows up The Great Believers (2018) ...with this beguiling campus novel that blends true-crime obsession and #MeToo-era reckoning with a woman’s inevitable exorcism of the past. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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