Set on Campus (1/7/25)

Looking to cozy up with a new dark academia read? Step back onto campus—from colleges, to magic schools, to boarding schools—with these upcoming titles!

THE INCANDESCENT by Emily Tesh
9781250835017 | 5/13/25

“Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.”

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.

THE NIMBUS by Robert P. Baird
9781250392657 | 6/10/25

On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation.

Though the nimbus appears only intermittently, and not to everyone, the otherworldly glow quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it, including Paul Harkin, Adrian’s broke and feckless graduate student, who likes being a graduate student a little too much for his own good; Renata Bennett, Adrian’s omnicompetent wife, who can’t see her son glowing even though the nimbus is turning her life upside down; and Warren Kayita, a down-on-his-luck librarian and aging div school alumnus on the run from a violent criminal. As news about the nimbus spreads around the university and beyond, Adrian, Paul, Renata, and Warren are set on a collision course that will threaten their lives and put their deepest convictions to the test.

At once a rollicking intellectual satire, a searing portrait of a family in crisis, and a thrilling metaphysical page-turner, THE NIMBUS offers a comic and profound examination of the persistence of spiritual belief in a secular age and humanity’s timeless search for meaning.

THE LIBRARY AT HELLEBORE by Cassandra Khaw
9781250877819 | 7/22/25

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 go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on their student body. Trapped in the school’s cavernous library, Alessa and her surviving classmates must do something they were never taught: work together.

If not, this school will eat them alive…

THE DOLLHOUSE ACADEMY by Margarita Montimore
9781250320650 | 2/11/25

Ivy Gordon is living on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the ultra-secretive, elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine. In secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the sordid truth of her life at the Dollhouse: strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner. Is something truly sinister powering the Dollhouse’s success?

Ramona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolizing Ivy. Now both twenty-two, neither has made much headway in showbiz until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. They’re enchanted by the picturesque campus and the chance to perform alongside their idols—though nothing prepares them for the fiercely competitive training boot camp. When Ramona begins to receive threatening anonymous messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success, while Ramona falls ever further behind. As the messages grow more unsettling, so does life at the Dollhouse. Can Ramona overcome her jealousy and resentment to figure out what’s really going on? Will Ivy finally find her voice, before another young performer follows her catastrophic path?

With dark academia twists and enormous heart, THE DOLLHOUSE ACADEMY is a novel about the complexities of friendship, our desire to be seen and understood, and the true cost of making our dreams a reality.

PARENTS WEEKEND by Alex Finlay
9781250360724 | 5/6/25

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families gather for a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths soon call them—come from five very different families. What drew them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril, or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from EVERY LAST FEAR and THE NIGHT SHIFT—PARENTS WEEKEND explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days in the dorms when our friends become our family.