Now that first days, orientation, and school supply purchasing has passed, students and teachers are buckling down to routines in mid-September. Are you the type that can't help buying a new outfit at the start of the school year, and delights in a new box of freshly sharpened colored pencils? Maybe you're curious about the inside baseball of publish or perish, or fascinated at the idea of secret societies? Whether you're a parent, a student, or a professor, these tales of college admissions, professors on sabbatical, or student-teacher dynamics could be your next reading assignment. Best enjoyed with a pumpkin spice latte and an apple cider donut.
Make sure to check out WPL's Reader's Corner for more book suggestions!
The Academy series by Elin Hilderbrand
- The Academy
When a surprise national ranking thrusts underachieving Tiffin Academy into the spotlight, a viral gossip app begins exposing students’ and staff’s secrets, unraveling reputations and relationships as the boarding school’s carefully curated image gives way to chaos, scandal and unexpected alliances. - The Thoroughbreds
September at Tiffin Academy is always a heady time, especially for the senior class--"sixth formers"--a season of college applications and intense pressure, of partying hard and last hurrahs. As the chapel bells ring in students and staff, everyone has something to look forward to--but in the midst of the anticipation and excitement, nagging questions and dark secrets lurk beneath the surface...
An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister
Two English professors enter a fake marriage in order to secure partner hire, but soon realize their feelings for each other aren't as fake as they'd once thought.
Admission by Julie Bauxbaum
The story of a teen whose promising future at the college of her dreams is upended by her minor celebrity mother’s arrest for a massive college admissions bribery scandal.
Portia Nathan, an admissions officer for Princeton University, takes her job--and the 17-year-olds whose applications she sees--very seriously. In fact, they come before everything else in her very orderly life, a life that she has, to some extent, been sleep-walking through for a while now.
- Ninth House
The offer: a full scholarship to Yale for Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a high school dropout with the rare ability to see ghosts.The catch: Tasked with monitoring the university's secret societies, Alex soon discovers that the elite institution is often willing to turn a blind eye to their occult transgressions. - Hell Bent
Galaxy "Alex" Stern assembles a motley crew to help her locate a gateway to Hell and rescue her friend Darlington. - Dead Beat
Demons are creeping through the streets of New Haven and the Yale campus, feeding on the souls of the living, terrifying the dead. Alex Stern and her allies can hunt them, but it's only a matter of time before the gates to the underworld open and they face a war they cannot win. To stop it, they'll have to reach deep into the secrets of Yale and its societies, and discover the truth hidden in Alex's own blood. Alex must contend with the machinations of a corrupt Lethe Board and a deadly vampire with his own connection to the societies. But she won't have to face the fight alone.
All Girls by Emily Layden
Nine young women embark on personal and scholarly journeys of self-discovery at a prestigious New England prep school, where their evolving voices are shaped by a scandal that the administration would cover up.
- A Discovery of Witches
Discovering a magical manuscript in Oxford's library, scholar Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches who has rejected her heritage, inadvertently unleashes a fantastical underworld of daemons, witches and vampires whose activities center around an enchanted treasure. - Shadow of Night
A follow-up to A Discovery of Witches finds Oxford scholar and reluctant witch Diana and vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont in Elizabethan London, where Diana seeks a magical tutor and Matthew confronts elements from his past at the same time the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens. - The Book of Life
Historian and witch Diana Bishop and her vampire scientist husband Matthew Clairmont return from a trip to the past still searching for the elusive alchemy tome Ashmole 782 in the final installment of the best-selling trilogy following Shadow of Night. - Time's Convert
Then: Eighteenth-century surgeon Marcus MacNeil joined the Continental Army, met vampire Matthew de Clermont, and took the plunge into immortality.Now: Marcus is engaged to mortal Phoebe Taylor, who has agreed to undergo the dangerous transition to vampire prior to their marriage.
The Blackbird Oracle - When the Congregation demands she and Matthew test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Oxford scholar and witch, Diana Bishop, forging a different path, confronts her family's dark past and reckons with her desire for even greater power--if she can let go of her fear of wielding it.
Babel, or the necessity of violence: an arcane history of the Oxford translators revolution by R.F. Kuang
Great Britain, 1828: Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan raised in England, studies under the enigmatic Professor Lovell in preparation for entry to Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel. Divided loyalties: As Robin pursues his studies, he also becomes involved with the Hermes Society, an underground network dedicated to thwarting Britain's imperial ambitions.
A dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students and the dark truths beneath their school’s promises of prestige.
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
Assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden, curatorial associate Ann Stilwell becomes obsessed with the history of fortune-telling after discovering a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future, blurring the line between the modern and the arcane.
Extra-Curricular by Rachel Lynn Solomon
When a former pop star enrolls in college, the last thing she expects is A-plus chemistry with her psychology professor. Ramona loves the way she flusters him, taking every opportunity to push Nick's buttons, though what she really wants is to unbutton them completely. When a crisis brings them closer outside of class, they begin a tentative friendship amid an undeniable attraction. But Ramona can't be so easily finished with her old life, and they'll both have to confront their pasts if they want a chance at something real.
Getting In by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Four quirky high-school seniors and their dysfunctional family chaperones set off on a tour of the Ivy League, where they attempt to hide their lack of credentials from a strange cast of admissions officers.
Hierarchy Series by James Islington
- The Will of the Many
A young man with a hidden past enters a leader academy under the orders of his adopted father and to secretly discover what lead to his brother's death in this historical fantasy series set in Ancient Rome. - The Strength of the Few
At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this fantasy series.
Dr. Lizzie Wells is grieving her husband in her own way—Victorian mourning clothes, handwritten letters, even an almost-kiss with his best friend, Henry. When a trip to London offers escape, Lizzie embraces new friends, bold adventures, and life’s messy beauty. But those late-night calls with Henry turn into something more, and when he shows up in London, Lizzie must decide: will she risk her heart for a second chance at love?
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai
California film professor and podcaster Bodie Kane's marriage has recently ended, so she's back at her New Hampshire boarding school to teach a podcasting class to high schoolers. The project they all agree on: investigating the long-ago murder of Bodie's roommate.
In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane
Spinetingling and sinister, this collection of 12 dark academia short stories from such masters of the genre as Olivia Blake, M. L. Rio and Susie Yang finds a lothario lecturer getting a visit from retribution; two graduates exhuming the secrets of a reclusive scholar; and much more.
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.
Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Secretly offering her services as a fake girlfriend, theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway engages in an all-out war of scholarly sabotage when the older brother of her favorite client, the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor's career, stands between her and her dream job at MIT.
The Magicians series by Lev Grossman
- The Magicians
Harboring secret preoccupations with a magical land he read about in a childhood fantasy series, Quentin Coldwater is unexpectedly admitted into an exclusive college of magic and rigorously educated in modern sorcery. - The Magician King
After Quentin and his old friend Julia leave Fillory on a magical sailing ship, they end up back in Quentin's home in Chesterton, Massachusetts, and only Julia's dark magic can get them back to the realm they have grown to love - The Magician's Land
Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him. Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever
When a member of a secret society known as The Maidens is murdered, a brilliant, but troubled, group therapist finds her obsession with proving the guilt of an untouchable Cambridge University professor spiraling out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her life.
Prep follows former scholarship student Lee Fiora (now 24) as she looks back over her years at a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts. Perpetually an outsider, Lee watches from a distance as those around her interact and forge relationships, and proves herself to be particularly competent at observing how class distinctions play out on campus. When she finally does decide to participate more fully in campus events, it is with decidedly mixed results.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A teacher at a girl's school in Edinburgh during the 1930s comes into conflict with school authorities because of her unorthodox teaching methods.
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Practical American Bex Porter, who unexpectedly falls in love with crown prince Nick while attending Oxford.
The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future or even the present, who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.
Scholomance series by Naomi Novik
- A Deadly Education
Galadriel "El" Higgins, a loner with an affinity for dark magic, just wants to survive until graduation, but the heroics of her classmate, golden boy Orion Lake, may prove more lethal than the maleficaria that infest the school - The Last Graduate
Dark sorceress Galadriel "El" Higgins is determined to get herself and her classmates to graduation day without getting killed by monsters. - The Golden Enclaves
This conclusion to the Scholomance series follows El's post-school life...such as it is.
When Richard Papen arrives on Hampden College's Vermont campus, he feels as if he's entered a different world. He's also drawn to the five close-knit, intelligent, and somewhat eccentric students in the Classics program led by a brilliant scholar. Once he's joined their exclusive group, however, he finds cracks under their sophisticated exteriors as secrets--and murder--threaten to tear them apart. If you enjoy psychological suspense and brilliant, self-indulgent characters, you'll likely also appreciate Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which stars a bright female high-school student who falls in with a similar crowd, with similar devastating repercussions.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A conflict of loyalties between prep school students Gene and his fearless friend, Phineas, leads to tragedy.
Teachers in Love series by M.A. Wardell
- Teacher of the Year
Teacher of the Year is a vivid character study of a lovable, neuro-spicy, Jewish, queer kindergarten teacher, falling for the dad of one of his students. - Mistletoe and Mishigas
This spicy and swoony romance follows two men with opposite personalities as they pretend to date during the holiday season. - Napkins and Other Distractions
Principal Kent Lester is proud of Lear Elementary School, but seven years after his divorce, he's finally ready to focus on his personal life. Things get off to a rocky start with his first date—although that doesn't stop them from spending the night together. Vincent Manda never seems to be able to move past the friend zone, and besides, he's not sure anyone can handle his OCD anyway. When his school buys new computer software, Kent’s alarmed to discover that his one-night stand is working on the installation. - Husband of the Year
Olan Stone wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with kindergarten teacher Marvin Block. And his daughter, Illona, can't wait to call Marvin her stepfather. They're bashert-meant to be. However, as the big day approaches, family tensions and unresolved issues put their future together in jeopardy.
These Dreaming Spires: A Dark Academia Anthology edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane
Twelve original dark academia stories from bestselling thriller writers, featuring darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, and the rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder.
The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher
Former childhood best friends reunite at magical boarding school after years, only to find themselves enemies on opposite sides of the ugly secrets hidden within the gilded walls.
The World According to Garp by John Irving
T. S. Garp, a man with high ambitions for an artistic career and with obsessive devotion to his wife and children, and Jenny Fields, his famous feminist mother, find their lives surrounded by an assortment of people including teachers, whores, and radicals.
The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton
Arriving at St. Dunstan's Academy in Maine, shy, sensitive Laura Stearns falls under the spell of charismatic, neurotic overachiever Virginia, who gives her purpose until the new school chaplain challenges Virginia, forcing Laura to decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
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