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I am a writer whose passion for Dark Academia developed in the academic world, teaching and studying at universities, as well as working in libraries and archives across the U.S. and Europe. I hold a master’s degree and Ph.D. in History from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. The hallowed halls of historic universities provide an ideal backdrop to explore ruthless competition and the relentless drive for intellectual supremacy, which is integral to the Academy. It’s a happy coincidence to me that Dark Academia books have become so popular recently. Fun fact: The Bequest was written before I had ever heard the term!
No Dark Academia list would be complete without The Secret History—Donna Tartt’s 1992-debut (!) has come to define the genre.
Among the many things I love about this novel are that it’s a mystery told in reverse, and a meditation on toxic friendships between students at a top-tier institution, which explores the darker corners of the human psyche contained within classical texts.
It’s a book I come back to again and again, and Tartt’s effortless style has influenced my own writing. There’s an intimacy here, and readers will feel as if they, too, are starting their campus journey together with newcomer Richard Papen, at a college based on Tartt’s own alma mater, Bennington.
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries.…
I went to four different boarding schools when I was younger, which at the time didn’t seem weird but it definitely is. I think boarding schools are peculiar places, full of teenagers with raging hormones, secret homesickness, and a certain sort of reckless swagger that is a recipe for all sorts of drama i.e. the perfect setting for a novel.I was on quite hefty scholarships and know how lucky I was to be there, but whether you have or haven’t been to boarding school, there is an endless fascination with them. I had a lot of fun writing The Islanders, wallowing happily in my nostalgia and reminiscing with old friends about what we got up to.
Another book about a misfit at a US boarding school. Frankie, our heroine, is sharp, possibly a criminal mastermind, and an ugly duckling turned pretty. At her school–Alabaster Prep–she gets in with a group of older boys and starts to undermine their secret prank society by outdoing them all, with (un)predictably disastrous consequences. This book is so much fun; adults and adolescents alike will love it.
The hilarious and razor-sharp story of how one girl went from geek to patriarchy-smashing criminal mastermind in two short years, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud.
* National Book Award finalist * * Printz Honor *
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
I’ve never belonged to a secret society, but I’ve always been drawn to the idea. When I wrote Stone Cove Island, I was thinking about secrets passed down between generations of the islanders, and I liked the idea that even within, but I liked the idea that even within this tiny community, there was an inner circle of people invisibly controlling things. I’d heard a story from a friend—and it might just be a story, but I’m not the only one who’s heard it—about a rich, private island where if you did something to displease the residents, they sent you a black sweater. No note. Just the sweater. The message was clear: time for you to go.
How I wish I could read this one all over again for the first time. I can’t, but you can! In this semi-magical spy thriller, 14-year-old Janie is suddenly forced to move to London from Los Angeles with her family, where she fits in badly in her new school as the awkward American. She’s quickly drawn into a secret network of spies – mostly of the amateur variety – who, thanks to an ancient book of potion recipes, can do all kinds of things, like turn into birds.
Fourteen-year-old Janie Scott is new to London and she's finding it dull, dreary and cold - until she meets Benjamin Burrows who dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father, the mysterious apothecary, is kidnapped he entrusts Janie and Benjamin with his sacred book, full of ancient spells and magical potions. Now the two new friends must uncover the book's secrets in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons.
I moved around non-stop as a kid, attending a dozen schools by age
eleven. As a result, once I stayed put long enough to make real
friends, I stuck to them like glitter glue. As a reader and writer, I
can’t get enough stories about female friendships, whether rock-solid or
fraying. My latest novel involves
childhood friends whose loyalty is stretched like a pair of latex gloves
yanked off at a crime scene. The book grew out of a meme I saw on
Facebook, captioned: “Real friends help you hide the bodies”. My first
thought was: who would I help? Straight off, I thought of my oldest
friends.
I’m a huge sucker for stories involving teen girls and secrets—and no one handles this trope better than Tana French in this wildly atmospheric boarding school mystery.
A year after a boy’s found murdered at a secluded Irish school, a note appears on a bulletin board reading: “I know who killed him.” It’s soon clear that a lot of the girls know something. What though?
I love the dark academia vibe, the claustrophobia, and the girls, so close-knit and determined. This is a gorgeously written tale of friendship, loyalty, lies, and betrayal, just buzzing with witchy teen energy.
"An absolutely mesmerizing read. . . . Tana French is simply this: a truly great writer." -Gillian Flynn
Read the New York Times bestseller by Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" (The Washington Post).
A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girls' boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin's Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption:…
I’m the author of eleven novels for young readers (so far!). I’m also a lifelong bookworm, and I’ve got a special love for all things creepy, fantastical, and odd. Growing up, I adored mysteries from Scooby-Doo to Sherlock Holmes, and you could often find me hiding under the covers with a stack of books and a flashlight long after I should have been asleep. Here are five more recent middle-grade mysteries that I've loved. If they’d been around when I was a kid, they would have kept me up hours past my bedtime.
This story has so many delicious ingredients—ancient boarding schools, secret societies, enigmatic notes slipped into pockets, young allies banding together against a powerful enemy—and they all combine to make the kind of book that classic mystery fans will devour.
For fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Blackthorn Key series comes an award-winning boarding school mystery about twelve year old Emmy, who's shipped off to a prestigious British school. But her new home is hiding a secret society ... and it may be the answer to Emmy's questions about her missing father. With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit in. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in…
I love urban fantasy and all the associated genres, like paranormal and horror. I love the question of “what if” and exploring how things would work if certain rules of magic or the supernatural were real. I love the variety and scope of world building that can be done parallel to and within our world through urban fantasy. That “what if” question is at the center of my own writing, and especially when I read non-fiction on topics like parallel universes and aliens and demons, I get so much inspiration for stories and worlds and what might be happening just beyond our view.
The Progeny is one of the best books I read last year. It’s a really fun and unique read because it combines historical fiction with urban fantasy and just a hint of sci-fi. The main character, Emily, has had her memory erased—but now someone is trying to kill her. She must figure out who she was and what was so important that she erased it from her memory, a journey which takes her on a quest through Europe to find out who she really is. The story explores the true history of Elizabeth of Bathory and ties it in with suspense and superpowers for a fast-paced story that is unlike any other. I read it in a couple of days because I couldn’t put it down.
New York Times bestselling author Tosca Lee brings a modern twist to an ancient mystery surrounding Elizabeth Bathory, the most notorious female serial killer of all time.
Audra Ellison has no idea why she's had her memory wiped clean, only that she chose to erase her past to protect someone else. But soon, a handsome stranger tells her she's special. Unique. That she has the power to influence the minds of others. And that her life is in danger.
She soon discovers that she is the descendant of a serial killer, the infamous "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory, and that she,…
As a writer who's struggled through building a lot of worlds and making them credible, I always admire a writer who can make me believe their world from the first paragraph. That conviction should go beyond belief. The reader should have great anticipation watching this world unfold, in learning how it works. All the writers I've mentioned achieved this goal, and exceeded it. My hat is off to them.
I loved The Rook for its amazing originality, the bizarre forms of magic shown by the various employees of the Checquy, and the true grit of the Rook, a young woman whose magic simply explodes when she's threatened. Though she's lost her memory, she's left herself notes in anticipation of that very thing! You have to admire her.
The body you are wearing used to be mine.' So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her. She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly…
When I read, I’m not just seeing the words on a page; I’m escaping into the world crafted by the author. Since I was a child, I’ve always been a lover of fantasy – it was an escape for me to slip between the pages and be a part of the world inside them. Especially if they were beautiful and filled with hidden danger. I wanted to have my heart pound out of my chest, to have the thrill of magic, wonder, and fear. Now, I try to write those types of worlds; because of the books which inspired me. I only hope you love them as much as I do.
I still remember the first time I came acrossHeart of Mist.
It completely overtook my senses and propelled me into the Upper Realmof her universe. Bleak, the female lead, is unlike any other female protagonist I’d ever come across – being angry, brave, and dealing with trauma by playing with a piece of rope. She felt real.
And the Upper Realms? I wanted to be there; discovering the forests of Valia and traversing their immense tree houses.
In a realm where toxic mist sweeps the lands and magic is forbidden, all Bleak wants is a cure for her power.
Still grieving the death of her guardian and dangerously self-medicating with alcohol, Bleak is snatched from her home by the Commander of the King’s Army, and summoned to the capital.
But the king isn’t the only one interested in Bleak's powers.
The leader of an infamous society of warriors, the Valia Kindred, lays claim to her as well, and Bleak finds herself in the middle of a much bigger battle than she anticipated.
As a child, I was fascinated with astronomy but discouraged from investigating the UFO phenomenon due to religious reasons. Not until I was in my forties, did I begin to see the strange Biblical hints of what ended up in my writing my book UFOs In The Bible. Along the way, my research led me to diverse related topics including Sumerian mythology and astrobiology which have resulted in a few more books (and more to come). I see logic as a fundamental tool for this line of investigation, and so, I embrace books that engage with the evidence logically. I firmly believe we must all make room for experiencers to tell their stories without recrimination.
UFOs, Nazis, Roswell, Freemasons, JFK, and the Apollo missions. This book covers a lot of very strange events and theories. Some of these theories you may have heard mention of and they probably sounded completely insane. However, to hear Mike tell it, really makes you wonder if there is some truth there. He unravels a giant rats’ nest of conspiracies in a way that really makes a lot of sense. I’m not saying it’s true necessarily, but Mike presents a lot of evidence that seems feasible. You gotta wonder.
Did ancient “visitors”—of extraterrestrial origin—come to Earth long, long ago and fashion man in their own image? Did they then lift the human race out of the ashes of a great global catastrophe around 10,500 BC? Were the science and secrets that they taught the ancients intended to be a guide for all humanity to the present era? Was this crucial information about our future and our true past hijacked by secretive cabals, some with bad intent and some with altruistic designs, who have held these secrets over the millennia? New York Times bestselling author Mike Bara says the answer…
I’m not sure where my love of thrillers in dark settings originated. I’ve always loved mysteries – starting out with Nancy Drew as a kid and then graduating to more mature material as I got older – and a setting that feels like a character in itself is fascinating to me. My love of the dark, moody element has developed as I’ve gotten older – I spent my twenties reading a lot of chick lit and upbeat fiction, but something has shifted in the last decade or so that caused me to embrace the darkness a bit more.
Ninth House is a bit of a departure from my normal choice of genre. This is a fantasy novel, but it takes place at Yale.
Focusing on the well-known “secret” societies that have been an institution at Yale for generations, Bardugo asks the question, what if there was more to these groups than just influence? What if they actually trafficked in black magic? Narrated by Galaxy (Alex) Stern, we see the school through the eyes of an outsider - Alex, a high school dropout, who was recruited by Yale because she has a very special gift.
The way Bardugo writes, you can feel the cold, gray winter of New Haven as though you are living it. No spoilers, but if you haven’t read this novel because it falls into the fantasy genre, read it immediately.
*The adult debut from the author of SHADOW AND BONE - now a Netflix Original series!*
The instant SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestseller that Stephen King calls 'Impossible to put down'.
Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime, Alex was hoping for a fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world's most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch.
Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale's secret societies - well-known haunts of the…
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