For some of us, school was a den of torment and torture, one designed to make every minute of our childhood as nightmarish as possible. So it only makes sense that authors would make these hallowed halls of education and degradation the settings of their mystery novels. And honestly, if there’s anyone who loves a dark academia novel, it’s me. While The Secret History by Donna Tartt is the obvious choice for this list, these books are similar in that they include a dark vibe of twisted egos and often a hint of murder. Secrets, scheming, and murders most foul await in these novels, so enjoy uncovering the various plots and ploys hidden within these ten books. You might even learn a thing or two!
10 Dark Mysteries for The Secret History Fans
School would be great . . . if there weren’t any other students. That’s what Sarah Taylor probably thinks given that she’s singled out on her first day at St. Ambrose School by queen-bee-mean-girl Greta Stanhope to be the new punching bag. It doesn’t help that Sarah is dealing with other issues in her life, including her bipolar disorder diagnosis. When a student ends up murdered, she begins to wonder what she might really be capable of and what kind of a mess she’s gotten into. THE ST. AMBROSE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS delivers on the dark and confusing feelings of adolescence while respectfully handling topics like mental health, self-identity, bullying, and isolation.
Heathers meets The Secret History in this thrilling coming-of-age novel set in a boarding school where the secrets are devastating—and deadly.
When Sarah Taylor arrives at the exclusive St. Ambrose School, she’s carrying more baggage than just what fits in her suitcase. She knows she’s not like the other girls—if the shabby, all-black, non-designer clothes don’t give that away, the bottle of lithium hidden in her desk drawer sure does.
St. Ambrose’s queen bee, Greta Stanhope, picks Sarah as a target from day one and the most popular, powerful, horrible girl at school is relentless in making sure Sarah knows what the pecking order is. Thankfully, Sarah makes an ally out of her roommate Ellen “Strots” Strotsberry, a cigarette-huffing, devil-may-care athlete who takes no bullshit. Also down the hall is Nick Hollis, the devastatingly handsome RA, and the object of more than one St. Ambrose student’s fantasies. Between Strots and Nick, Sarah hopes she can make it through the semester, dealing with not only her schoolwork and a recent bipolar diagnosis, but Greta’s increasingly malicious pranks.
Sarah is determined not to give Greta the satisfaction of breaking her. But when scandal unfolds, and someone ends up dead, her world threatens to unravel in ways she could never have imagined. The St. Ambrose School for Girls is a dangerous, delicious, twisty coming-of-age tale that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
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Grad school can be incredibly stressful, but rarely does it drive anyone to murder. For Grayson Hale, that may have been the case. The American grad student confesses to having killed his classmate on the devil’s orders, clearly having broken under the stress of attending graduate school in Scotland. But after he kills himself in his prison cell, Hale’s memoirs are uncovered, and there may have been more validity to his claims than others might believe. What secrets lie in wait? What does his job as a ghostwriter have to do with his eventual crime? A HISTORY OF FEAR asks us how far can being afraid drive us from the light, even as we work to escape the dark.
This “disorienting, creepy, paranoia-inducing reimagining of the devil-made-me-do-it tale” (Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World) follows the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student arrested for murder.
Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil’s Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it.
When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along?
The first-person narrative reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger—but he has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson’s world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he’s working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership.
“A modern-day Gothic tale with claws” (Jennifer Fawcett, author of Beneath the Stairs), A History of Fear marries dread-inducing atmosphere with heart-palpitating storytelling.
Some historical and international fiction fans may be familiar with the phrase traduttore, traditore, which in essence means: translation is an act of betrayal of the original’s truth. For Robin Swift, a young Chinese boy in 1820s Canton, that means the betrayal of his home country by aspiring to, and later attending, Oxford’s renowned Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel. Babel is not just a home of language and translation, but also magic, giving Robin access to powers and opportunities he could only dream of. But what secrets does Babel house that could turn Robin’s dreams into nightmares? BABEL is a fantasy tale that touches on the very real history of colonialism and imperial invasion that will have you up all night to reach the stunning conclusion.
You would think school would be different if you’re a teacher, but it’s just as miserable for the staff as for the students. Take Latin master Roy Straitley, who works hard to keep his students in line, with some limited success, so they can grow up to be upright members of the community. But when a student he had twenty years ago returns as the school’s new headmaster, it turns out Straitley’s lessons have not helped temper this dark and power-hungry man. DIFFERENT CLASS is full of dark secrets, some of which belong to Straitley himself, and prove that the greatest mysteries are not always the most obvious ones.
“It’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips meets The Bad Seed. Joanne Harris’s latest novel, Different Class, has a killer elevator pitch and, what’s more, it delivers on its intriguing premise….[A] rich, dramatic tale that builds to a surprising conclusion.” —The Washington Post
“Harris delivers mischief and murder to an English prep school in Different Class, a delightfully malicious view of privileged students with overly active imaginations.” —The New York Times Book Review
From the New York Times bestselling author of Chocolat comes a dark, psychological suspense tale in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith about a sociopathic young outcast at an antiquated prep school and the curmudgeonly Latin teacher who uncovers his dangerous secret.
After thirty years at St. Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, England, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its own clowns, rebels, and underdogs—all who hold a special place in the old teacher’s heart. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t quite fit the mold. A troublemaker. A boy with darkness inside.
With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new headmaster arrives at the venerable school, bringing with him new technology, sharp suits, and even girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist these steps toward the future, a shadow from his past begins to stir again. A boy who still haunts Straitley’s dreams twenty years later. A boy capable of terrible things.
Sometimes it’s the people who make school hellish, and sometimes it’s just the dark and ominous architecture of the place that inspires fear. When Laura Stearns first enrolls at St. Dunstan’s Academy, she finds herself charmed by its quirks, especially its choir, led by the eerie but fascinating Virginia. Unfortunately for Laura, Virginia also very much takes an interest in her. Laura’s life becomes a dark, twisted game of devotion, obsession, and fanaticism as Virginia drags her ever closer to St. Dunstan’s awful secret. Be forewarned, THE WORLD CANNOT GIVE is a truly subtle read right up until the end, when the literary trap springs on you, leaving you both stunned and wanting more.
“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 school—and the ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them.
When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the member of the choir.
Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
The World Cannot Give is a “hypnotic and intense” (Shondaland) meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.
THE SHADOW YEAR begins with a mother who has just lost her child, and ends with her uncovering a horrible truth that leaves her grieving in a different way. Lila’s loss of her prematurely born child has left her in need of a distraction. Like, say, renovating an old cottage that she’s just inherited. But the cottage already has its history; it housed recent college graduates thirty years back who dreamed of living off the land and their friendships. But their utopia proved too good to be true, and Lila finds out just how badly things ended in her new little home where all their secrets came undone.
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When referring to academia, people don’t always mean schools—it includes other institutes of education and research, such as museums. THE FIFTH GOSPEL is one dark academic mystery that ventures into the museum world. Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest, has his house broken into the same night that the curator of a mysterious new exhibit at the Vatican Museums is killed. When the papal police hit a dead end in their investigation, Father Alex takes it upon himself to figure out why the curator was murdered, and what it had to do with an ancient and controversial holy relic. But the curator’s killer isn’t above taking down a man of the cloth, so it’s a race against the clock to preserve both history and justice.
The #1 Indie Next Pick and instant, long-running New York Times bestseller from Ian Caldwell, coauthor of the international sensation The Rule of Four: The Fifth Gospel is a masterful intellectual thriller that “will change the way you look at organized religion, humanity, and perhaps yourself” (David Baldacci).
Acclaimed by critics as a “smart, suspenseful thriller” (People) that “kicks off at ninety miles per hour and doesn’t slow down” (Associated Press), Ian Caldwell’s The Fifth Gospel was also a significant commercial success that spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover and was selected as a #1 Indie Next Pick by America’s independent booksellers.
In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. The same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator’s secret: what the four Christian gospels—and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel known as the Diatessaron—reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend’s death, Father Alex finds himself hunted down by someone with vested stakes in the exhibit—someone he must outwit to survive.
At once a riveting intellectual thriller, a feast of biblical history and scholarship, and a moving family drama, The Fifth Gospel is “spectacular…deliciously labyrinthine…this superb Rubik’s Cube of a novel is the best of its kind” (The Providence Journal).
Bree Matthews is already having a hard go of it. After her mother dies in an accident, she’ll do anything to get out of her childhood home and away from the memories that linger there. A program at UNC-Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape, until she witnesses an intense supernatural attack on her first night there. A teenage mage who claims to be a “Merlin” tries but fails to erase Bree’s memory, leaving her with the images of a demon feeding off people’s energy and a surprising set of magical powers. Determined to uncover the Merlins’ secret society and how it played into her mother’s accident, Bree recruits former society-member Nick and hones her skills. LEGENDBORN is an action-packed story full of shifts in alliances, prophecy, and magic that is sure to keep you glued to the page.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller!
Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award
Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles).
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.
This paperback edition of Legendborn contains a teaser to the thrilling sequel, Bloodmarked, as well as an exclusive short story from Selwyn Kane's perspective!
THE CLOISTERS is another dark, atmospheric read set in a museum. Ann Stilwell gets assigned to work at the Cloisters, the medieval art branch of the famous Met Museum in New York City, which, while a dream for some, feels like a let-down. Besides preferring to work in the more prestigious (and not so far-removed) main collection, Ann finds that the curators at the Cloisters are both arcane and off-putting, wrapped up in their conspiracies around the museum’s pieces. But Ann might become a believer herself after she finds a fifteenth-century deck of tarot cards which may actually be able to tell fortunes. Will the cards be kind to this would-be curator, or will Ann find there’s more truth to her coworkers’ claims than she thought? THE CLOISTERS is perfect for any museum nerd (like yours truly) who loves the dark and occult, and can’t help being pulled in by the mysteries of these gothic buildings.
A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
This instant New York Times bestseller that is “captivating in every sense of the word” (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author) follows a group of researchers uncovering a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York’s famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when she discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a “masterwork of literary suspense that surges to an otherworldly conclusion” (Mark Prins, author of The Latinist).
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Biographer Margaret Lea seems to get a dream assignment: writing about author Vida Winter, an eccentric recluse best known for a riveting short story collection. However, as Margaret gets to know her, she finds that Vida is as good at crafting alternate lives for herself as she is at writing stories. Even so, Margaret falls in love with Vida’s intricate ghost story, filled with nefarious gardens, a scheming governess, and a massive house fire. But can she suss out the facts in these fictions, or will she be charmed by Vida and drawn away from seeing the grisly truth? THE THIRTEENTH TALE is a book full of secrets, and not just Vida’s, that will make you question the fictions we tell ourselves to get through the day.
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In this novel, biographer Margaret Lea is approached by a well-loved but gravely ill author with a surprising request: she wants Margaret to capture her life story before it’s too late. Although Margaret has never read the author’s work, she’s intrigued, and soon gets immersed in her strange and troubling history. Now both women will have to confront their pasts—and grapple with the ghosts that still haunt them.
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