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The Lessons

Naomi Alderman · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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If We Were Villains

M.L. Rio · 368 pages

Entreated to tell his side of the story to a detective who put him in prison a decade earlier for a murder he may not have committed, Oliver Marks describes his past as a Shakespearean actor in college whose rivalry with a castmate escalated in dangerous ways.

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Bunny

Mona Awad · 305 pages

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The Bellwether Revivals

Benjamin Wood · 420 pages

Bright, bookish Oscar Lowe has escaped the urban estate where he was raised and made a new life for himself amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge. He has grown to love the quiet routine of his life as a care assistant at a local nursing home, where he has forged a close friendship with the home's most ill-tempered resident, Dr. Paulsen. But when he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether,

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The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 557 pages

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

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The Fall of the Kings

Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman · 476 pages

Basil St. Cloud falls in love with a descendant of the royal line of deposed and magical kings, and finds himself caught up in a secret movement demanding a return to the rituals of the past.

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The Rebel Angels

Robertson Davies · 326 pages

Murder, theft perjury, love, and scholarship at a modern university trouble the life of a beautiful partgypsy graduate student.

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Bradstreet Gate

Robin Kirman · 320 pages

The brutal murder of a Harvard senior and rumors about a charismatic instructor haunt the lives of three graduates over the course of a decade-long search for answers.

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Tam Lin

Pamela Dean · 468 pages

Publisher's description: "In the ancient Scottish ballad "Tam Lin," headstrong Janet defies Tam Lin to walk in her own land of Carterhaugh . . . and then must battle the Queen of Faery for possession of her lover’s body and soul. In this version of "Tam Lin," masterfully crafted by Pamela Dean, Janet is a college student, "Carterhaugh" is Carter Hall at the university where her father teaches, and

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The Oxford Murders

Guillermo Martinez · 208 pages

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Confusion

Stefan Zweig

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Gabriel's Redemption

Sylvain Reynard · 495 pages

Gabriel's Inferno #3 "Professor Gabriel Emerson has left his position at the University of Toronto to embark on a new life with his beloved Julianne. Together, he's confident that they can face any challenge. And he's eager to become a father. But Julianne's graduate program threatens Gabriel's plans, as the pressures of being a student become all consuming. When she is given the honor of present

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The Rule of Four

Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason · 450 pages

"Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two students are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets - to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, an

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My Education

Susan Choi · 352 pages

Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He's said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He's condemned on the walls of the women's restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one warned Regina about his exceptional physical b

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Ravelstein

Saul Bellow · 236 pages

"Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein's surprise he does

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The Maidens

Alex Michaelides · 352 pages

"Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike-particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one membe

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Nocticadia

Keri Lake · 682 pages

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Waking the Moon

Elizabeth Hand · 451 pages

Sweeney Cassidy is a freshman at the University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine, where she meets the mysterious Angelica and falls in love with the strange and beautiful Oliver. She gets tangled up in sinister, supernatural events involving a secret society and the awakening of an ancient, malevolent goddess. According to the afterword for the short story "The Bacchae", found in the c

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The Oxford Inheritance

A.A. McDonald · 320 pages

"At prestigious Oxford University, an American student searches for the truth about her mother's death in this eerie, suspenseful thriller that blends money, murder, and black magic. Cassandra Blackwell arrives in Oxford with one mission: to uncover the truth about her mother's dark past. Raised in America, with no idea that her mother had ever studied at the famed college, a mysterious package no

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The Siren

Tomi Adeyemi

Emery Coleman attends Dartmouth on a scholarship and joins a cultlike group known as the Sirens. (Ages 16 to 18)

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The Sonnet Lover

Carol Goodman · 359 pages

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Stephen Florida

Gabe Habash · 295 pages

"In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he's created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and lands

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Gaudy Night

Dorothy L. Sayers · 469 pages

Harriet Vane attends her Gaudy (reunion) at Oxford to find a mystery brewing. The first part of the book involves Harriet and the dons (professors) at her college. Lord Peter Wimsey also helps with the investigation by mid-book. The romantic tensions between Harriet and Peter are explored. Gaudy Night is rich with literary allusions and is beautifully written.

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Unhallowed Halls

Lili Wilkinson · 464 pages

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