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Recommended Reads: Dark academia
Dark academia is a relatively new subgenre that combines an academic aesthetic, or in the literary sense, a campus novel, with some other darker theme.
Dark academia is a relatively new subgenre that combines an academic aesthetic, or in the literary sense, a campus novel, with some other darker theme. These themes can range from a murder mystery, paranormal darkness, or any other area that can lend a darker twinge to a campus novel. The characters are usually in an academic setting, and the pursuit of knowledge — sometimes to the point of obsession — is a main focus of the story, along with themes of secret societies, classical literature, and Gothic influence. As back to school season and spooky season come together, step inside some dark academia novels to get your fix of both!
Digital book (DB), braille (BR), and large print (LT), copies of these titles are available from Perkins Library or the Worcester Talking Book Library. Please contact Perkins Library to order any of these books.
Prepared by Betty Thompson, Children’s Resource and Service Librarian, Perkins Library
Middle grade books
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E.L. Konigsburg
DB 022914, BR 009549, available as BARD download
Claudia, feeling misunderstood at home, takes her younger brother and runs away to New York City where she sets up housekeeping in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For grades 4-6. Newbery Medal.
Download From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, DB 022914
Download From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, BR 009549
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1)
by Jonathan Stroud
DB 078207, available as BARD download
Plagued by malevolent spirits, London turns to ghost-hunting agencies staffed with youth sensitive to paranormal activities. Anthony Lockwood, George Cubbins, and Lucy Carlyle join together to become Lockwood and Co.—but after bungling a job, their only chance at redemption is clearing a dangerous haunted house. For grades 6-9.
Download The Screaming Staircase, DB 078207
Who Could That Be at This Hour? (All the Wrong Questions #1)
by Lemony Snicket
DB 075613, available as BARD download
A new adventure begins for thirteen-year-old Lemony Snicket when he sneaks away from his parents—and a breakfast of bad eggs—at the Hemlock Tearoom and Stationery Shop to search for the author of a strange note that was dropped in his lap. For grades 3-6 and older readers.
Young adult books
Ace of Spades
by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
DB 103918, LT 030408, available as BARD download
Shortly after the announcement that Devon and Chiamaka will be part of an elite school’s Senior Prefects, someone who goes by the name Aces begins using anonymous text messages to reveal secrets about the two of them that threaten to turn their lives upside down. For senior high and older readers.
Curious Tides
by Pascale Lacelle
DB 117123, available as BARD download
Teen mage Emory must unravel the truth behind the secret society that may have been involved in her classmates’ deaths. Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere… to face the fate she was never meant to escape. For senior high and older readers.
The Forest Demands Its Due
by Kosoko Jackson
DB 117115, available as BARD download
When the murder of his classmate at an elite boarding school seems to be forgotten overnight, seventeen-year-old Douglas must confront centuries of secrets in the school’s past and a vengeful creature in the forest surrounding the campus. Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious. Then a student is murdered—and by the next day no one remembers him having existed, except for student Douglas Jones and the groundskeeper’s son, Everett Everley. Searching for the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest: a vengeful creature seeking blood as payment for a debt more than 300 years in the making. For senior high and older readers.
How We Fall Apart
by Katie Zhao
DB 105180, available as BARD download
Nancy Luo, Krystal Choi, Akil Patel, and Alexander Lin, juniors at Manhattan’s elite Sinclair Prep, are forced to confront dark secrets after Jamie Ruan, once their closest friend, is found dead. Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. For senior high and older readers.
The Mary Shelley Club
by Goldy Moldavsky
DB 103614, available as BARD download
Scholarship student Rachel keeps to herself at Manchester Prep, preferring the company of horror films to trust fund babies. When a prank puts her on the radar of a mysterious student society, the Mary Shelley Club, they subject her to escalating Fear Tests that catch the attention of a serial killer. For senior high and older readers.
A Lesson in Vengeance
by Victoria Lee
DB 105144, available as BARD download
Felicity returns to the Dalloway School after her girlfriend’s tragic death, only to meet Ellis—a new student and a teenage literary prodigy—who enlists Felicity’s help in researching the school’s bloody, occult history for her new book. For senior high and older readers.
The Ravens
by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige
DB 102129, available as BARD download
Loner Vivi Devereaux is thrilled to join Westerly College’s Kappas, who are secretly witches, until she meets perfect, polished Scarlett Winter, who will stop at nothing to be the sorority’s next president. Strong language, descriptions of sex, and some violence. For senior high and older readers.
A Study in Drowning
by Ava Reid
DB 116420, available as BARD download
Entering a contest to redesign late author Emrys Myrddin’s estate, aspiring architect Effy Sayre arrives at Hiraeth Manor where she meets a stodgy young literature scholar who draws her into a battle against dark forces – both mortal and magical – that threatens to consume them both. For senior high and older readers.
Truly Devious
by Maureen Johnson
DB 090251, available as BARD download
When Stevie Bell, a brilliant amateur detective, begins her first year at Ellingham Academy in Vermont, she hatches a plan to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder’s wife and daughter shortly after the school opened in 1936. Some violence. For senior high and older readers.
Adult books
The Atlas Six
by Olivie Blake
DB 105936, DB 115557 (Spanish), BR 024501, available as BARD download
Every year, six uniquely talented magicians are selected to compete for initiation into the secretive Alexandrian Society. Libby, Nico, Reina, Parisa, Callum, and Tristan make up the latest group. The six must fight to survive and prove themselves the best to avoid elimination.
Download The Atlas Six, DB 105936
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
by R.F. Kuang
DB 110624, LT 032572, available as BARD download
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. Babel is the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide. Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?
Bunny
by Mona Awad
DB 095562, available as BARD download
Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her master’s program because she’s a scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to the company of people—especially the clique of women who call each other “Bunny.” But then she is drawn into their world.
Ghosts of Harvard: A Novel
by Francesca Scottoline Serritella
DB 116230, available as BARD download
Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia took his own life there the year before. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers. As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies-but what tipped him over the edge?
If We Were Villains
by M.L. Rio
DB 111849, available as BARD download
Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago. As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
The Likeness
by Tana French
DB 067436, BR 021701, available as BARD download
A murder victim found in an old cottage looks exactly like detective Cassie Maddox and has the name Lexie Madison—an identity that Cassie once invented to infiltrate a drug ring. Cassie goes undercover to find her double’s killer.
Magic for Liars
by Sarah Gailey
DB 095390, BR 022926, LT 027172, available as BARD download
Ivy Gamble was born without magic and never wanted it. Ivy Gamble is perfectly happy with her life—or at least, she’s perfectly fine. She doesn’t in any way wish she was like Tabitha, her estranged, gifted twin sister. Ivy Gamble is a liar. When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself.
Ninth House
by Leigh Bardugo
DB 097047, BR 024760, LT 027321, available as BARD download
Galaxy ‘Alex’ Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies, well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than she ever imagined.
Real Life
by Brandon Taylor
DB 098508, BR 023066, available as BARD download
Wallace, a biochemistry graduate student, struggles to remain connected with his friends because of his sense of self-preservation as a gay black man from Alabama living in the Midwest. But an unexpected encounter with a straight man fractures his defenses and threatens the equilibrium of his community.
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
DB 035868, available as BARD download
When Richard Papen is accepted at a small Vermont college, he gladly leaves his boring California identity behind. After he makes up an appropriate past, Richard is allowed to join an elite group of students who take all of their classes from one professor. Richard learns that the clique is hiding some odd secrets—and one deadly one. The members trust Richard, but they’re not so sure of one of their own. Strong language and violence. Bestseller.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
DB 063286, BRG 02299, available as BARD Download
Blue Van Meer, erudite daughter of an itinerant professor, settles into Stockton, North Carolina, for her senior year in an elite high school. But she is unprepared for the death of a favourite teacher and some startling truths about her own family.
The Starless Sea
by Erin Morgenstern
DB 097441, LT 027195, available as BARD Download
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a rare book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to a subterranean library, hidden far below the surface of the earth. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a beautiful barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the rare book and in his own life.
Download The Starless Sea, DB 097441
The Truants
by Kate Weinberg
DB 098417, available as BARD Download
Jess Walker enrolled at her East Anglian university because of the mesmerizing Agatha Christie scholar, Dr. Lorna Clay, whose seminars soon transform Jess’s thinking. Swept up in Lorna’s thrall, Jess falls in with a tightly knit group of rule-breakers, but the dynamic between the friends quickly darkens.
Download The Truants, DB 098417
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