Go Back to School With Queer Dark Academia

The Temple School of Thaumaturgy has trained many of the U.K.’s brightest minds, and rumor has it there’s magic hidden in the school’s grounds. Childhood best friends Briar and Sebastian were pulled apart when Seb was admitted to Temple and Briar was denied. When Briar gets a summer job sorting through the dusty collections in the school’s attics, they are shocked to find that their sweet best friend has turned into the school bully. But they’re even more surprised by the twisted secrets hidden in Temple’s archives. It’s a spellbinding exploration of knowledge, power, and corruption.

Bricksbury University is one of the country’s oldest HBCUs, tucked into the dense woods of Appalachia. On her thesis advisor’s recommendation, grad student Zora decides to research a folkloric beast who stalks the nearby woods. But Zora’s probing leads her straight into the middle of a secret society that forces her to question if there is a grain of truth at the heart of the local legend. Steeped in Appalachian history, it’s an atmospheric horror novel that will haunt you long past the final chapter.

Theater kids, past and present, this queer dark academia is for you. Mallory hopes to leave the ghosts of her past behind when she starts classes as a theater major at a liberal arts college in Rhode Island. But the college has its own haunted history as a sanitarium, and when Mallory gets a lead role in Romeo and Juliet, the dark spirits hiding in the school are drawn to the promising young starlet. Full of drama, love triangles, and ancient evil, this is an exhilarating horror story worthy of a standing ovation.

The prestigious Regent Academy, deep in the Vermont forest, attracts students who want to become powerful leaders and visionaries. Douglas, however, ended up at Regent because he got into some trouble at his old school, and his mom just got a job there. Then a student dies, and by the next morning, everyone except for Douglas seems to have forgotten the student ever existed. When Douglas finds out that the groundskeeper’s son also remembers the dead student, they discover an ancient curse haunting the school — a curse that only Douglas can break.

Each year, thirteen students at an exclusive (and wildly expensive) magic school get a chance to have their tuition waived if they can pass the honors class. The catch? To pass the class, they must kill their professor, a demon summoned from hell. And if they get caught in a failed assassination attempt or reach the end of the year without achieving their goal, the students are, in turn, killed by their professor. Set in a fantastical queernormative world, it’s a macabre story with a tongue-in-cheek message about student loans.

The teachers at Hellebore are absolute monsters. Then again, so are the students. It’s an academy where terrifying beasts and evildoers with apocalyptic intentions go to redeem themselves and graduate into quiet, normal lives. But on graduation day, the professors gorge themselves on the senior class. A small group of students escapes the carnage and locks themselves inside the library. What terrible acts must they perform in order to escape? It’s grisly, gory, and gives readers a new perspective on what it means to be a monster.

As grad student Jamie focused on her classes and dissertation, her mother Serena spiraled into grief, locking herself away in an abandoned schoolhouse after the death of her wife. Jamie decides to reconnect with her mother by bringing her in on her secret: Jamie is a witch, and she hopes that teaching Serena some of her magic could help break down the walls she’s built around her heart. Author Charlie Jane Anders deftly combines a classic New England college setting with beautiful, healing magic and a stunning story about complicated mother/daughter relationships.

This young adult thriller follows two Black students at an elite private school who, once they’re named senior prefects, find themselves targeted by anonymous texts spilling their secrets to the whole school. What they first suspect is a cruel prank spins into something far more dangerous, and it becomes clear their attacker will stop at nothing to ruin their reputations. Dark, mysterious, and full of sharp social commentary, it’s a must-read for fans of dark academia.

Basin College, a historic women’s school deep in the Ozarks, is dangerously near shuttering as the endowment left by 19th-century author Beatrice Donahue dwindles to nothing. Then Celia, an archivist dedicated to Donahue’s legacy, discovers a feverish partial manuscript of a horror novel written near the end of the author’s life, hidden and preserved in a jar of formaldehyde. With Donahue’s draft and a bit of light forgery assisted by her professional nemesis Joan, Celia might just save the college. Or instead, she and Joan might descend into madness, wrecked by their shared obsession with a long-dead author’s mysterious last words.

Larkspur Lee ran halfway around the globe to escape her abusive mentor. Now she’s studying alchemy at a secretive university in Paris under the tutelage of immortal headmistress Petronelle Flamel. Then Professor Flamel is found murdered. And shortly afterwards, Lark’s old mentor strangely appears in town with ulterior motives. Tangled in the dangerous web of her headmistress’s death, a mysterious cult, and her new university’s dark secrets, Lark must question if the power inherent in her alchemical studies is worth the price she’s paying.