Autumn Reading List: Dark Academia Murder Mysteries
18 books chock-full of murder mysteries and occult intrigue at boarding schools & universities.
I’m back with the second installment of my Autumn Reading List series! (Read the first one, all about haunted houses, here). This time I’m sharing twenty more recs that fit another of my favorite tropes – a murder at a boarding school!
Some of these are a bit of a loose interpretation of that, but basically I’m looking for anything that involves dark academia vibes and mostly takes place at a school or university. Some of these skew a bit more YA (comes with the territory) but all of them are absolutely worth reading.
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1. Bunny by Mona Awad
Starting off strong with an icon in weird girl lit. I guess this is less “murders at a boarding school” and more “strange, possibly occult goings-on at a university,” which absolutely counts in my opinion. Our narrator, Samantha Heather Mackey, is attending an MFA program in literature at a highly-exclusive New England liberal arts university. She’s a scholarship student, and couldn’t feel more at odds with the other students in her cohort, especially the enigmatic group of beautiful rich girls who all call each other “bunny” and seem to move and speak as one unit. But Sam catches the Bunnies’ eye(s) and they extend her an invitation to their infamous “smut salon.” As Sam gets more and more entwined with the Bunnies, things start to get seriously weird – with potentially deadly consequences. It’s like Mean Girls meets Heathers meets The Craft, and I’ve loved it since the beginning.
2. People Like Us by Dana Mele
Another classic “outsider infiltrates the popular clique at school to devastating results” plot. Kay Donovan has completely reinvented herself as a star athlete and undisputed queen bee at her posh private school. But when a student’s body is found in the lake on campus, Kay’s past might come back to haunt her. What’s more, the dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt that seems to be targeting each of her friends individually as suspects – until finally the crosshairs land on Kay herself.
3. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Alex Stern, daughter of a hippie free spirit, high school dropout, and girlfriend of a drug dealer, finds herself the sole survivor of a grisly multiple homicide at age 20. When she is given a chance to start anew on the other side of the country, as a freshman at Yale University, she takes it. There’s just one catch – her mysterious new benefactors task her with keeping an eye on the not-so-secret societies on Yale’s campus. These eight societies are popular haunts for the rich and powerful, playing host to current and future politicians, movie stars, and wall street hot shots. As Alex gets further into their ranks, she learns that their extra-curricular activities are more sinister than anyone could have imagined – raising the dead, calling forth demons, and sometimes even targeting the living.
4. A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro
I adore this entire series, it is so cozy and nostalgic to me. It’s basically a modern-day retelling of Sherlock Holmes, where the teenage descendants of Holmes and Watson (who were real people in this universe) are both attending the same boarding school. When a classmate is murdered, it becomes clear that someone is trying to frame Charlotte and Jamie by setting up crimes that mirror those written about by their ancestors.
It’s great. Plus a Sherlock-coded character that’s a moody, troubled 16-year-old girl is like, extremely up my alley.
5. The Secret Place by Tana French
I’m back again to wax poetic about Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. The second installment, The Likeness, also fits our list, but since I recommended it in my last roundup, I’ll move on to the fifth book in the series. These books are all vaguely interconnected, but could be read out of order or on their own (but if you like one, you’ll like them all, so just go ahead and start at the beginning).
In this book, a teenage boy turns up murdered at a girl’s boarding school. With very little evidence, the case goes cold. A year later, Holly Mackey, the 16-year-old daughter of Detective Frank Mackey shows up at her father’s protege’s office with a photo of the dead boy and a handwritten note that says “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Detective Stephen Moran and his partner, Detective Antoinette Conway, reopen the case under the more-than-watchful eye of Frank Mackey. The detectives are pulled headfirst into the dark underworld of teenage girls as the clues point back to Holly, her group of friends, and their rival clique. I really love this book because there is a slight hint of ambiguity as to whether it was an open and shut murder or if there were some supernatural elements at play.
6. Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Another series that is solidly YA territory, but SO SO GOOD.
Ellingham Academy is a prestigious private school for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists, founded in the 1920s by Albert Ellingham, an eccentric millionaire. Shortly after the school opened, Ellingham’s wife and daughter were kidnapped, and the only clue left behind was a mocking riddle that listed out several possible means of murder, signed only with the words “Truly, Devious.” It became one of America’s most infamous unsolved crimes. Enter Stevie Bell, true crime aficionado and first-year student at Ellingham. Her plan for her thesis project is simple – she’s going to solve the cold case that has eluded armchair detectives and actual police forces for nearly a century.
But of course, it’s never that easy. Almost as soon as Stevie arrives on campus and begins pursuing possible leads (in between socializing and studying, of course), Truly Devious makes a surprise reappearance – and another unsolved murder rocks Ellingham Academy. Now the race is on to find the killer, or killers, before the past catches up with everyone.
7. They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman
Freshman year at Gold Coast Prep School, Jill’s best friend Shaila was murdered by her boyfriend, Graham. He confessed, Graham went to jail, and everyone else went on with their lives. Now it’s Jill’s senior year, and she’s determined to make the most of it from her cushy position in the school’s not-so-secret society. But when Jill starts getting texts from an unknown number declaring that Graham DID NOT kill Shaila three years ago, everything threatens to spiral out of control. And if Graham didn’t kill her, that means the real murderer is still on the loose…
8. The Divines by Ellie Eaton
Fifteen years ago, Josephine was a member of the most popular clique at the elite English boarding school, St. John the Divine. Now she’s in her thirties, married, and hasn’t spoken to any of her former classmates since the school shuttered its doors in disgrace. But something has inexplicably drawn her back to her old stomping grounds, and her visit dredges up blurry, half-formed memories of those last few weeks as a Divine. The more she recalls, the more her life derails as she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s closure – and the part she may have played in it.
9. The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montimore
The Dollhouse Academy is an elite, secretive boarding school and talent incubator for aspiring actors, performers, and celebrities of all stripes. For eighteen years, Ivy Gordon has been the headline star – but she’s growing tired of pretending that all is well behind the walls of the Dollhouse. She begins to write secret diary entries that detail strange medical exams, experimental supplements, and something else that has left her so shaken she can’t speak about it.
Concurrently, two young new twenty-somethings who have grown up idolizing Ivy are granted admission to the Dollhouse. Ramona and Grace are utterly enchanted by the picturesque campus and the opportunity to rub shoulders with their idols – until Ramona starts receiving mysterious, threatening letters. At first it’s easy to write it off as a prank by one of their rivals, but the notes become more and more unsettling. Now Ramona must put aside her envy at Grace’s skyrocketing fame to uncover the dark truth at the heart of the Dollhouse Academy before it’s too late.
10. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
When Ines Murillo gets accepted to the prestigious Catherine House, she thinks this is her ticket to a better life. Catherine House is a school unlike any other – secluded in the deep woods of Pennsylvania, its alumni include famous poets, authors, presidents, heads of state, and genius inventors. For the lucky few who are selected each year, room and board, tuition and meals are all paid for – in exchange, students must pledge three years of their lives to the school. No television or music, no contact with their friends or family, no outside influence of any kind. A seemingly small price to pay for the promise of a gilded future, but once Ines is behind the gates of Catherine House, she starts to wonder if it’s worth it after all…
11. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I can’t just not include the mother of all dark academia books, now can I? Full disclosure, I really want to re-read this book, because the first time I read it… I HATED it. I found it boring, stuffy, pretentious, and about 200 pages too long. With that being said, I think that my taste in literature has changed a LOT since I first read it in 2016. Back then I was still pretty much exclusively reading YA, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is quite a different vibe than this. Everyone else on the internet seems to love this book, so I sort of want to re-evaluate it. Though, with my current TBR pile, it’s gonna be like 2035 before I get around to re-reading anything.
Anyways, if you’re unfamiliar with Donna Tartt’s modern classic, it follows – what else! – a group of rich kids (and one scholarship student) at a private university who get a little too carried away with the Bacchanalia vibes under the influence of a charismatic Classics professor. When one of their number ends up dead, the group splinters under the weight of guilt.
12. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
It’s 1950, the height of Jim Crow laws in the South, and 12-year-old Robbie is sentenced to six months at a reformatory school for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in self defense. Robbie has always been able to see ghosts (called “haints”) which used to be a comfort to him – but now that he’s trapped in the brutal reformatory school system, the haints warn him of the darker secrets the facility hides, and what happens to boys like him in an unjust system. Heartbreaking, vindicating, and haunting in more ways than one!
13. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
This trilogy was outrageously formative to my interests, aesthetics, and tastes in literature and fiction, probably as much if not more so than Harry Potter. So again, these are definitely YA novels, though they deal with a lot of heavy stuff.
This book kicks off with 16-year-old Gemma Doyle witnessing her mother’s mysterious death in 1895. It’s officially ruled as a suicide, but Gemma has doubts. In the wake of this tragedy, Gemma is sent back to England from India, where she grew up, and shipped off to a reputable boarding school that will shape her into the society wife she is destined to become. But destiny might have other plans… for one thing, Gemma keeps having strange visions and hallucinations, during one of which she finds an old journal on the grounds of Spence Academy. Together with her group of new friends, and under the tutelage of an unorthodox art teacher, the girls foray into a spirit realm where Gemma’s mother – or something that looks like her – is waiting.
It’s Victorian, it’s macabre, it’s occult, it’s feminist, it made me who I am!!!! If YA is not for you, that’s fine, but could I humbly beg you to recommend these books to any pre-teen or teenage girls in your life who are quiet and a little weird? They’ll really appreciate it.
14. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
It’s been ten years since Jessica Miller graduated from the elite Duquette University, and she’s planning her triumphant return at her class reunion, ready to show off how successful she’s become in the intervening decade. But the specter of her friend’s unsolved murder ten years before looms over everything – and when Jessica finds herself reunited with the group of six friends that she’d been closest to during it all, secrets are uncovered and a long-unsolved murder just might be solved.
15. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
Five students at Bayview High School walk into detention on a Monday afternoon; only four walk out. Simon is dead before detention is over, and his death is ruled as a murder. What’s more, Simon was the creator of a popular gossip app on campus, and was planning to reveal juicy secrets about the other four students in detention the following day. Now it’s up to them to find the killer and defend their innocence… if they are, in fact, innocent. Its like a twisted, crime-y version of the Breakfast Club, I love it.
16. The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas
Five years ago, five cheerleaders at Sunnybrook High died in suspicious ways – two in a car accident, two murdered by a neighbor, and the last one by suicide. The school disbanded the cheer team out of respect for the victims. Monica, whose sister was the last cheerleader to die, would rather forget about it all. But now the school wants to honor the victims, and strange events are starting to unfold – suspicious letters in Monica’s stepdad’s desk, a mysterious new friend at school, an unearthed, years-old cell phone… things are starting to fall into place and Monica finds herself at the deadly center of it all.
17. The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Minerva grew up listening to her great-grandmother’s stories of witches and “real” magic. Now, it’s the 1990s, and she’s a graduate student studying the history of horror literature and researching the obscure horror author Beatrice Tremblay. During the course of her work, Minerva discovers that Beatrice’s most famous book, The Vanishing, was inspired by true events. Decades earlier, Beatrice was attending the very university where Minerva now studies, and became obsessed with her beautiful, otherworldly roommate, who mysteriously disappeared without a trace. As Minerva digs deeper into the Beatrice’s manuscript, the story starts to sound alarmingly similar to one her great-grandmother had told her many years before. And she starts to worry that the same dark forces that terrorized both her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay are now targeting Minerva herself.
18. This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead
Following the death of her father, college student Jane Sharp finds solace in true crime forums, becoming an armchair detective on the internet, obsessed with cold cases and forensic evidence. But when the brutal murder of three college-aged girls goes viral, Jane and her band of internet sleuths are pulled into the actual investigation. As they uncover clues, the evidence seems to contradict itself more than ever – and everything just seems a little too perfectly written to be a real crime. Once Jane finally figures out what’s truly going on, it may be too late for all of them.
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They all sound great and this is one of very few dark academia lists i’ve seen that goes beyond the basics!!! 🤍
i love this list and want to read all of them!