• Genre Guide
  • Staff-Created List

Dark Academia Books to Read by Candlelight

For fans of The Secret History and all things dark academia, we bring you this carefully curated list featuring ancient buildings, prestigious schools, academic rivalries, dark mysteries, and haunting atmospheres!

Pickering Public Library

18 items

  • A dark haunting story of murder, the bonds of sisterhood and a secret society at Princeton.
    BookNew York : Bantam Books, 2024. — FIC Brown
  • Lennon gets invited to take the entrance exam to Drayton college, a school of magic.
    BookNew York : Ace, 2024. — FIC Hende
  • An isolated and ancient college deep in the hills of Massachusetts filled with dark secrets and ambitious students. New student Laura Sheridan enters an intense academic rivalry with Carmilla.
    BookNew York, NY : Redhook, 2024. — FIC Gibso
  • Recounts the year in the life of an undocumented Harvard senior. Wry and vunerable narrator Catalina navigates her past, her uncertain future, and tragedies as she faces her impending graduation.
    BookNew York : One World, 2024. — FIC Corne
  • Dark academia meets Hunger Games in this thrilling tale about Vis Telimus who is sent to a prestigious academy to uncover the truth behind a mysterious accident.
    eBookS&S/Saga Press, 2023
  • Estranged half-sisters are tasked with guarding their family’s library of ancient and magical books. And together they must unravel the deadly secret that lies at the heart of the collection.
    BookNew York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2023. — FIC Torzs
  • Art historian Cate Adamson flees to Spain with the hidden painting she discovered and teams up with Duke Antonio to reveal the history behind the mysterious painting.
    eAudiobookTantor Media, Inc., 2024
  • Archivist Clara Eden works for eccentric estate owner Agatha Montague, researching romantic letters that are thousands of years old. But something isn’t right about her employer and it's too late to run.
    eAudiobookTantor Media, Inc., 2024
  • A collection of short stories featuring all the staples of dark academia; boarding schools, secret societies, old and gloomy buildings, and a haunting atmosphere.
    eBookShortwave Media, 2023
  • Beauty and the Beast meets Dracula in this story of outcast Corvina gets accepted to a mysterious university, a secluded castle on top of a mountain. It’s here she finds herself pulled into a chilling century-old mystery.
    eBookTor Publishing Group, 2023
  • The story follows an Indigenous woman named Tookie who gets a job at a local bookstore after years of incarceration where she is haunted by a former customer, Flora.
    BookNew York, NY : Harper, 2021. — FIC Erdri
  • Doerr covers past, present and future in this non-linear tale for lovers of books and all things storytelling.
    BookNew York : Scribner, 2021. — FIC Doerr
  • PhD student Ingrid Yang is struggling to finish her dissertation on poet Xiao-Wen Chou when she stumbles upon a note that leads her to an explosive discovery.
    BookNew York : Penguin Press, 2022. — FIC Chou
  • Social outcasts Paul and Julian meet in their first year of university in the early 1970s. Their intense and toxic relationship leads them to murder.
    BookNew York : Harper, 2020. — FIC Nemer
  • Recently widowed Mariana Andros travels to Cambridge to investigate the murder of her niece Zoe’s friend. Her lead suspect is the handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor who has a secret society of women called the Maidens.
    BookNew York, NY : Celadon Books, 2021. — FIC Micha
  • A whodunit psychological thriller about six friends, a college reunion, and an unsolved murder.
    BookNaperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, 2021. — FIC Winst
  • Ten years ago, Toby was found dead in his room. Now Jeremy reunites with his Oxford friends to solve the mystery of his death.
    eAudiobookStorm Publishing, 2024
  • Described also as a queer southern gothic, characters Eddie and Andrew are inseparable until their bond is threatened when Eddie leaves for graduate school. Before they can reunite, Eddie takes his life leaving Andrew to search for the…
    BookNew York : Tordotcom, 2022. — FIC Mande