DARK ACADEMIA
BEYOND THE AESTHETIC 
volume one
 
fiction that has the Dark Academia vibe, but more diverse and inclusive, and not quite so Eurocentric
Bunny

by Mona Awad
 
 Samantha Heather Mackey (is 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 MFA fiction writing cohort -- a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.
Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo
 
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer.  Alex got in because she can see dead people. 
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck

by Ann Beattie
 
At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse, teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. 
The World Cannot Give
 
by Tara Isabella Burton
 
 When the shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan's Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic "prep school prophet" (and St. Dunstan's alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at 19, fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Plain Bad Heroines

by Emily M. Danforth
 
 A century after the macabre deaths of several students at a New England girls' boarding school, the release of a sensational book on the school's history inspires a horror film adaptation that renews suspicions of a curse.
The Things We do to Our Friends

by Heather Darwent
 
Edinburgh, Scotland: a moody city of labyrinthine alleyways, oppressive fog, and buried history; the ultimate destination for someone with something to hide. Perfect for Clare, then, who arrives utterly alone and yearning to reinvent herself. And what better place to conceal the secrets of her past than at the university in the heart of the fabled, cobblestoned Old Town?
The Divines
 
by Ellie Eaton
 
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. Josephine hasn't spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace.
Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine

by Klara Hveberg
 
 Rakel has always been more comfortable with numbers than with people. A gifted woman with a rare talent for math, she has never mastered the art of making friends. At nineteen, she moves to Oslo to attend university. There she meets Jakob, a brilliant older teacher who becomes fascinated by Rakel's quick mind.
Our Best Intentions

by Vibhuti Jain
 
 During summer break, Angie is walking home after swimming at the high school pool when she finds Henry McCleary, a white classmate from a wealthy family, stabbed and bleeding on the football field. The police immediately focus their investigation on Chiara Thompkins, a runaway Black girl who disappears after the stabbing and--it's later discovered--wasn't properly enrolled in the public high school.
Vladimir

by Julia May Jonas
 
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students--a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own...
Hex

by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
 
Expelled from her graduate program in biological science after a lab-mate dies, a victim of the group's toxicological experiments, Nell Barber is left obsessed and unmoored. Though once she'd been focused on oak trees, she is now consumed by the need to finish the dead girl's project to "neutralize botanical toxins," to combine the poison and its antidote. 
The Plot

by Jean Hanff Korelitz
 
 Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program.  He hasn't written -- let alone published -- anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.
Babel : or the Necessity of Violence : an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

by R. F. Kuang
 
 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. 
The Swallows
 
by Lisa Lutz
 
 When Alexandra Witt joins the faculty at Stonebridge Academy, she's hoping to put a painful past behind her. Then one of her creative writing assignments generates some disturbing responses from students. Before long, Alex is immersed in an investigation of the students atop the school's social hierarchy -- and their connection to something called the Darkroom.
I Have Some Questions for You

by Rebecca Makkai
 
 Bodie Kane, producer of a hit podcast about Hollywood starlets, has been invited back to Granby, the elite New Hampshire boarding school she graduated from in 1995, to teach a course on podcasting during the two-week "mini-mester" of January 2018. Among the topics Bodie suggests to her students is the murder of her classmate Thalia Keith, which occurred in the spring of their senior year on the night of the school musical.
The Latinist
 
by Mark Prins
 
Tessa Templeton has thrived at Oxford University under the tutelage and praise of esteemed classics professor Christopher Eccles. And now, his support is the one thing she can rely on: her job search has yielded nothing, and her devotion to her work has just cost her her boyfriend, Ben. Yet shortly before her thesis defense, Tessa learns that Chris has sabotaged her career -- and realizes their relationship is not at all what she believed.
My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell
 
 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due.
The Broken Girls

by Simone St. James
 
 Vermont, 1950 . There's a place for the girls whom no one wants--the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town where it's located, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming -- until one of them mysteriously disappears...
Indecent

by Corinne Sullivan
 
Introverted Imogene Abney is offered a teaching position at the elite Vandenberg School for Boys. During her tenure at the elite school she meets a handsome, popular student and learns what it's like to be young, female, and desperate to be loved by the wrong person. 
The History of Living Forever

by Jake Wolff
 
Conrad Aybinder is a boy with a secret; sixteen and ready for anything. A chemistry genius, he has spent the summer on an independent-study project with his favorite teacher, Sammy Tampari. Sammy is also Conrad's first love. But the first day of senior year, the students are informed that Mr. Tampari is dead. 
 
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