“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”
If you’re looking for books like Ninth House, you’re probably craving more dark academia, secret societies, and morally grey characters. Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, and its sequel, Hell Bent, captivated readers with its haunting blend of magic, mystery, and academia – and luckily, there are plenty of other novels that offer the same irresistible mix. Whether you love fantasy books set at elite universities, stories about hidden power, or dark academia fantasy books for adults, this list will help you find your next obsession. From eerie campus mysteries to modern gothic tales, these stories explore privilege, ambition, and the dangerous allure of knowledge. So, if you’ve been wondering what to read after Ninth House, dive into these equally compelling reads that promise all the atmosphere, intrigue, and danger you loved in Bardugo’s world.
The Atlas Six – Olivie Blake
Kicking off our list of the best books like Ninth House is Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six. The Alexandrian Society are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who are gifted a place among them will enjoy a life of wealth, power, and prestige. And each decade, the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.
When the latest batch of candidates is recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access ot the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will. Most of them.
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If We Were Villains – M.L. Rio
Oliver Marks has just served ten years in prison – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him behind bars. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened all those years ago.
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters begin to usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into real life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
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Babel – R.F. Kuang
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, ancient Greek and Chinese, preparing for the day he’ll enrol in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation – also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s centre for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working – the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars – has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonialisation.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But Robin soon realises that serving Babel means betraying his Chinese motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organisation dedicated to stopping imperial expansion.
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The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to learn how his own life has been recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues that lead him to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.
What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians – it’s a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose – both in the mysterious book and his own life.
A Lesson In Vengeance – Victoria Lee
Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School. Perched in the Castkill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her own room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumoured to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students, who all died mysteriously.
It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So, when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five, Felicity can’t say no. One of the best dark academia books like Ninth House, history soon repeats itself in Victoria Lee’s A Lesson in Vengeance as Felicity faces the darkness in Dalloway and in herself.
The Library Of The Dead – T.L. Huchu
When a child disappears in Edinburgh’s dark streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her own Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But, as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted? Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living.
But, in her latest investigation, she’ll learn things that will change her whole world. She’ll dice with death, discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She’ll also experience dark times. Similar to the hidden mysteries in Ninth House, Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa needs to hunt them all down in T.L. Huchu’s YA fantasy mystery novel, The Library of the Dead.
Check Out These Magical Fantasy Books To Curl Up With
Catherine House – Elisabeth Thomas
Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of Pennsylvania, the school has produced some of the most brilliant minds and successful people in the world. Yet, such privilege comes with a cost. Students are required to give three years – summers included – completely removed from the outside world. Among this year’s incoming class, Ines, who is stunned to find an environment of sanctioned revelry waiting for her.
For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. Yet, the House’s strange protocols soon begin to feel more like a gilded prison. Soon enough, Ines begins to suspect that the school might be hiding a dangerous agenda. Like Ninth House, Catherine House is a story about a dangerously curious undergraduate whose rebelliousness leads to the discovery of a shocking secret involving an exclusive circle of students.
Vicious – V.E. Schwab
Victor and Eli began as college roommates – brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognised the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.
Ten years on, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up with his old friend. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person he can find. Armed with terrible power on both sides, the archnemeses have set in motion a course for revenge. In Vicious, V.E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn’t necessarily lead to heroism, perfect for anyone who loved Ninth House.
A Deadly Education – Naomi Novik
Another one of the best dark academia fantasy novels like Ninth House, Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships. Survival is more important than any grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate, or die trying.
El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
The Cloisters – Katy Hays
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she hopes to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a Gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art. There, she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, including Patrick Roland, the museum’s mercurial curator who specialises in the history of tarot.
Patrick is determined to prove that ancient divination holds the key to foretelling the future. And when Ann happens upon a breakthrough in the form of a mysterious deck of fifteenth-century Italian tarot cards, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship, and ambition in a gothic fantasy thriller anyone who loved Ninth House is sure to recognise.
Our Crooked Hearts – Melissa Albert
On the way home from a party, seventeen-year-old Ivy and her soon-to-be ex nearly run over a nude young woman standing in the middle of a tree-lined road. It’s just the first in a string of increasingly eerie events and offerings. Most unsettling of all, corroded recollections of Ivy and her enigmatic mother’s past resurface, with the help of the boy next door.
What if there’s more to Ivy’s mother than what meets the eye? And what if the supernatural forces she messed with during her own teen years have come back to haunt them both? Ivy must grapple with these questions and more if she’s going to escape the darkness closing in. Straddling Ivy’s contemporary suburban town and her mother’s magic-drenched 1990s Chicago, this bewitching and propulsive story similar to Ninth House, rockets toward a conclusion guaranteed to keep readers up through the night.
These Violent Delights – Micah Nemerever
When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonisingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father’s recent death. He sees the wealthy and charming Julian as his only equal – an ally against the conventional world he finds so insufferable. But as charismatic as he may be, Julian is also volatile and cruel.
As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared to the brutality they can inflict on one another. Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
