Mystery Suspense Meets Dark Academia

The Reunion is a mystery thriller set at an elite prep school on the French Rivera. Twenty five years ago, in the midst of a raging snowstorm, nineteen year old Vinca Rockwell disappeared. Now, in the present, her three best friends return to the school for a reunion. But they've got an ulterior motive: the gym is being renovated, and there's a body hidden in its walls. They know because they put it there. This novel will have you flipping pages as fast as you can as the truth of what happened on that long-ago night slowly unravels.

If you're looking for a dark academia true crime book, you'll want to pick up We Keep the Dead Close. In this haunting memoir, Becky Cooper picks apart the layers of truth and myth in the story of Jane Britton, a Harvard graduate student murdered in 1969. Cooper first heard rumors about Jane as a Harvard undergrad: that Jane was having an affair with a professor, who then murdered her when she threatened to talk about it. As Cooper delves into the murky details of the case, she uncovers a complicated story about misogyny, entitlement, and institutional secrets.

Related: Becky Cooper Talks About How Murder Becomes a Myth

Confessions is a deliciously dark and twisty novel that beings with a middle school teacher delivering a lecture to her students on her last day of teaching. She's telling them a story about her young daughter's death. From there, the book cycles through several different points of view, as various students recall the events of the day their teacher's daughter died.