Back-to-school season is always a weird time for everyone. Young people dread it for obvious reasons, and grown-ups tend to get intense flashbacks. But if you think your school days were strange, check out these books.

Today’s collection is dedicated to the literary aesthetic known as dark academia, a broad cross-genre tag for stories that center on the signifiers of higher education. Some see it as an evolution of the campus novel, but consensus on a definition is hard to come by. Dark academia is more of a vibe than anything else—old libraries at night, boarding school drama, scholarly intrigue, and a kind of perpetual, aching nostalgia.
 
The books gathered below invoke the dark academia vibe to a greater or lesser degree, sometimes digging into the core tropes and sometimes caroming off in new directions entirely. You’ll find plenty of fantasy stories and mystery-thrillers, along with variations of sci-fi, horror, romance, historical fiction, and YA fiction.
 
This is a pretty comprehensive syllabus if you want to read your way through modern dark academia. For instance, you might start in the Notable Alumni section with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and wend your way through Tana French’s The Likeness, R.F. Kuang’s Babel, all the way up through this year’s new titles, both recently released and looking forward through the end of 2025.
 
Click around and you’ll find even more dark academia riffs on the Arthurian legend, mass hysteria, rock stars, and sapphic space operas. It’s a big tent. Use the Want to Read button to add any interesting leads to your digital shelf.