Dark Academia

🏫 Dark Academia is a subgenre that blends a Gothic aesthetic with a scholarly environment, and often features morally gray characters. A perfect fit for the autumn back-to-school season! 👨‍🏫

Updated July 30, 2025
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A deadly education : a novel
Novik, Naomi
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver comes the first book of the Scholomance trilogy, the story of an unwilling dark sorceress who is destined to rewrite the rules of magic. FINALIST FOR THE LODESTAR AWARD * "The dark...
The magicians
Grossman, Lev
Paper Book
Lev Grossman's new novel THE BRIGHT SWORD is out now! The New York Times bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world, now an original series on SYFY "The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of...
If we were villains : a novel
Rio, M. L.
Paper Book
'Enter the players. There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us. Until that year, we saw no further than the books in front of our faces.' On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door....
Babel or the necessity of violence : an arcane history of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Kuang, R. F. (Rebecca F.)
Paper Book
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War   "Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial...
My dark Vanessa
Russell, Kate Elizabeth
Paper Book
An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 DYLAN THOMAS AWARD 'A package of dynamite' Stephen King 'Powerful, compulsive, brilliant' Marian Keyes An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and...
Ordinary monsters
Miro, J. M.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "Charles Dickens meets Joss Whedon in Miro's otherworldly Netflix-binge-like novel." --The Washington Post MOST ANTICIPATED SFF BOOK of 2022 by Tor, The Nerd Daily, BookBub, Philadelphia Inquirer, Goodreads, CrimeReads, Buzzfeed,...
The starless sea
Morgenstern, Erin
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From the bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world--a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea. Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont...
The World Cannot Give
Burton, Tara Isabella.
Paper Book
"The Secret History meets The Price of Salt" (Vogue) in this "equal parts dangerous and delicious" (Entertainment Weekly) novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding...
The Cloisters
Hays, Katy
Paper Book
The Secret Historymeets Ninth House in this sinister, atmospheric novel . . . the discovery of a mysterious deck of tarot cards lays bare shocking secrets within a close-knit circle of researchers at New York's famed Met Cloisters museum. 'Beguiling and...
The plot
Korelitz, Jean Hanff
Paper Book
** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ** The Tonight Show Summer Reads Winner ** A New York Times Notable Book of the Year** "Insanely readable." --Stephen King Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz...
The woman in the library a novel
Gentill, Sulari
Paper Book
The cartographers
Shepherd, Peng
Paper Book
'Exquisitely written ... Be prepared to be swept away on an incredible journey' Brad Thor, #1 bestselling author of Black Ice 'A story about magical maps that lead to your heart's desire [and] the people who would do anything to find them ... A vastly rich experience...

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