8 Dark Academia Romances at the Top of the Class

Gwen Ashby is out of a job and seemingly out of luck until she is given a trial position at the William Marshall Academy, a gothic all-boys boarding school tucked into the misty Appalachian Mountains. 

She loves the campus and the students, but most of all, she is entranced by Edwin Yorke, the school’s headmaster. Yorke is a well-mannered and charming, albeit formal, English gentleman. But don’t let appearances fool you. He has secrets to keep, including a latent sexual energy that Gwen craves.

But there is more to William Marshall than meets the eye. A woman dressed in white wanders the grounds at night. This enigmatic figure may hold the key to understanding what's really going on at William Marshall.

Amelia has just transferred to Ellis University where she’s the second in her family to be invited into “The Eight,” a secret society that seems to control life on campus. She appears to be just like her bourgeoise peers, but really, she is at Ellis looking for answers. Her brother left campus unexpectedly, and her friend disappeared without a trace.

To make things even more complicated, Amelia has attracted the gaze of the school’s star hockey player, and it seems he is the one that holds the key to answering her questions. Half Truths combines two beloved subgenres—dark academia romance and hockey romance—to make for a scintillating read.

In Godwin Honors Hall, students mourn the death of Nicole Werner—a blonde, gorgeous, 4.0 GPA sorority sister. Nicole was killed in tragic car accident where her boyfriend Craig, who was driving, escaped with no injuries and even more inexplicably, no memory of the accident.

Craig returns to campus with suspicions high against him, and in this novel, the anonymous college campus setting is an isolating, suffocating place. But things get much, much more bizarre when a new rumor arises: Nicole is back.

In 1902 at the Brookhants School for Girls, students Flo and Clara in love. They start a club together, The Plain Bad Heroine Society, because of their mutual love for trailblazing author Mary MacLane and her audacious, smash-hit memoir. It seems like happily ever after, until their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book lying next to them and a swarm of yellow jackets buzzing around their corpses. 

In the present, Merritt Emmons has just cemented herself as literature’s next star with her own book about the now-abandoned Brookhants. The book is even slated for a movie adaption starring queer icon Harper Harper as Flo and second-generation Hollywood actor Audrey Wells as Clara. But after filming commences, the trio is exposed to perils far crueler and more unusual than they could ever expect.

At Grant University, four students are playing a seemingly harmless game of Mazes and Monsters (similar to Dungeons and Dragons). Things are all fun and games until the students begin to take their roleplaying a little too seriously, and everything spirals out of control.

The students, embroiled in danger and infatuation, must reckon with what is reality and what is fantasy and whether their passions are enduring or ephemeral.

After losing her mother, Corvina Clemm feels totally alone in the world. So, when she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts with little hesitation.

Vad Deverell keeps to himself, but he also likes knowing about everything happening at Verenmore. A part-time professor working on his thesis, Vad has been around long enough to know the dangers the castle possesses. And things only grow after Vad meets Corvina.

These two should have never cross paths, but at Verenmore, an odd mystery pervades the school: People have disappeared every five years for over a hundred years. Corvina may finally solve this long-unsolved case, and Vad can’t look away.

Tessa has come to Oxford to puzzle out what happened to her sister, but after arriving, she meets the mysterious Anthony “Saint” St. Clair, the future Duke of Ashford.

Despite her best judgment, Tessa can’t resist the charming Duke. She is drawn into a world as sensual and tempting as it is threatening. Tessa is tasked with dangerous secrets. How much will these secrets cost? Read and find out.

Oliver Marks was a promising young actor until his career was unceremoniously cut short—by accusations of murder. Now, after a decade, Detective Colborne has more questions.

Oliver and six of his classmates are studying Shakespeare at Dellecher Classical Conservatory in the out-of-the-way town of Broadwater, Illinois. But tension gets riled up when a lesser character surpasses the former stars and theatrical violence becomes painfully real. It will require an exceptional performance to convince the police there was no foul play.

To make the threads of the story even more tangled, Oliver and his castmates have some messy, messy love affairs.