9 Dark Academia New Releases Perfect for Fall

Fall is officially here and I’ve rounded up some morally grey tantalizing reads that are perfect for lovers of all things dark academia. Enemies to lovers, academic rivals, and some vampires too. Grab your favorite fall blanket, light that candle, and lets get reading!

Disclaimer : I am not an affiliate for any program, but I love to support local and independent bookstores, libraries, and the authors who write these books to the best of my ability. That is why all links to purchase these titles are to Bookshop.org and not Amazon. As always check out the Libby app, Hoopla, or Overdrive for free or borrowed books if you can’t purchase them right now.

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

Okay can we talk about this cover! As a botanical lover, I would’ve instantly been enthralled seeing this on a shelf. I have these same hellebores in my gothic garden and cannot wait for them to make their reappearance in the spring. The deluxe hardback edition has rich deep blue sprayed edges and this gorgeous jacket design. The concept of this book is everything you could want in an academic horror. An academy for the destructive, dangerous, and monstrous types that must work together to survive a school that is meant to kill them. I cannot wait to devour (pun intended) this one.

Publisher Synopsis

The author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth is back with a grim and gruesome tale at the heart of an elite academy where monsters become prey.

AN INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

A deeply dark academia novel from USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education and An Education in Malice who are hungry for something more diabolical.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told after she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But the Institute is more than just a haven for monsters. On graduation day, the faculty embark on a ravenous rampage, feasting on their students. Trapped in the school’s cavernous library, Alessa and her surviving classmates must do something they were never taught: work together.

If they don’t, this school will eat them alive…

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Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

If you haven’t read R.F Kuang you are seriously missing out. After reading Babel in undergrad I knew I was going to read everything that she writes. Her fresh take on academia, all encompassing worlds, and knack for tackling heavy subjects in a creative way make her a fast favorite. The cover art is brilliant! This contemporary take on the nine circles of hell wrapped up in library shelves is a dark academic dream.

Publisher Synopsis

Acclaimed author R.F. Kuang journeys into the depths of the underworld in her latest fantasy swirling with dark academia vibes in this gripping tour de force. This is perfect for fans of Olivie Blake and Leigh Bardugo.

Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own. 

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.

That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….

Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.

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Boys with Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell

I love a retelling, and a gothic retelling is just the thing to get you in that eerie mood. Academic setting, morally grey protagonist, murder mystery, AND an enemies to lovers with a why choose twist, count me in! No literally…*adds to cart*

Publisher Synopsis

*An Instant New York Times Bestseller*

We Were Liars meets The Raven Boys in this warped reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray about dark revenge, twisted desire, and the sinister secrets lurking behind the walls of an elite boarding school.

“A darkly delicious spiral where each page makes you crave more.” ―CG Drews, author of Don’t Let The Forest In

Seventeen-year-old Marin James has always lived in the shadow of the exclusive Huntsworth Academy. And when her cousin is found dead on school property, Marin knows exactly who’s to blame: Adrian Hargraves and Henry Wu, the enigmatic yet dangerously alluring leaders of the school’s social elite.

Seeking justice, Marin poses as a student and infiltrates Huntsworth, only to find herself drawn to her new life—and to the two broken boys she once vowed to destroy.

When Marin uncovers an otherworldly secret the boys are hiding within Huntsworth’s ivied gates, the lines between right and wrong, love and hate, and nightmare and reality begin to crumble—and nothing is as it seems.

Welcome to Huntsworth Academy.

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Alchemised by SenLinYu

Fans of the extremely popular fan-fiction Manacled have been flooding the stores to grab a copy of this highly anticipated dark academic fantasy debut. With hints of Beauty and the Beast and Handmaid’s Tale mixed with a post war world and alchemy, this is sure to be an instant bestseller!

Publisher Synopsis

All hope seems lost for Helena, a prisoner of war grappling with a dreary world of death and dark magic — and an inexplicable case of amnesia. Epic and engrossing, Alchemised is the gritty and gothic read we’ve all been waiting for.

In this riveting dark fantasy debut, a woman with missing memories fights to survive a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy—and the man tasked with unearthing the deepest secrets of her past.

“What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours? The war is over. Holdfast is dead. The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.”

Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.

In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.

According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?

To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.

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Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma

A little bit about me… I LOVE a vampire book. I’ve been obsessed with them since I watched Francis Ford Coppolas’ 1992 Dracula with Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves, and Winona Ryder. I even have a print of Lucy in her undead bride couture hanging in my office. You might say vampires are my favorite monster. Now add that in an academic setting and I might not put this book down once I open it.

Publisher synopsis

The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the enigmatic vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.

It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.

 To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.

 When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.

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The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I know I just said I love vampires, but I also LOVE witches. You can love more than one thing right? Right?! Witches, academia, AND horror? This one might be moving to the top of my TBR list.

Silvia is the queen of gothic horror and if you’re on the fence about horror, this is the perfect place to start. Gothic horror isn’t a jump scare, or a gory bloodbath, its all in the mind. The feeling you get when someone (or something) is watching you. The uncanny feeling that something is off about that person you just met. Moreno- Garcia is a master of the enigmatic and the eerie and will have you reaching with a bated breath for the night light.

Publisher Synopsis

Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.

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Kiss the Villain by Rina Kent

Possessive, unhinged, and a criminal, this law professor is going to have you wishing you were late to class (if you know what I mean). This standalone novel is brilliantly centered in the Legacy of Gods world ready to welcome your return.

Publisher Synopsis

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Immortal Consequences by I.V. Marie

As if the Hunger Games couldn’t get any darker, the Decennial might just take the cake, or should I say, the soul. With Hades and Persephone vibes and an academic competition where loosing is worse than death, this dark romance might be one Hell of a ride.

Publisher Synopsis

SIX RIVALS. ONE VICTOR. ETERNITY IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

“A twisty and thrilling dark academia fantasy that will have you enthralled from the very first page.” —Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning

Six students compete to change their fate at a darkly enchanted boarding school in purgatory where graduation is the only escape—and love can cross the boundaries between life and death.

Welcome to Blackwood Academy: the legendary school located on the fringes of the afterlife. Once a pupil enters the academy’s arched gates, there is no way out…except the Decennial, a cut-throat magical competition with only one victor.

This year, six of the Academy’s top students have been chosen to face the Decennial’s tests. Two academic archrivals, whose strange connection blurs the lines between obsession and hate. One girl driven solely by ambition, and another plagued by memories of the love she lost. And a charming playboy who never cared for anyone—until he met the academy’s newest student. But what none of them know? They aren’t the only ones playing Blackwood’s game.

Who will win, and who will fall? Only one thing is for certain: in this game, some fates are worse than death.

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Arcana Academy by Elise Kova

An underworld academy sounds like the perfect place for all the dark romance girlies to find the monster of their dreams and academia over prison sounds like a win/win to me. My favorite minor arcana is the Three of Swords and let’s hope she’s lurking in these pages waiting to make her move on this dark romance.

Publisher Synopsis

Clara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards—a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy.

Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy’s enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape—for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time.

In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be.

Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world—and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?

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