21 Books That Will Make You Feel Like You’re Back on Campus

It’s 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins—a super-senior resident assistant at Belgrade Dormitory—wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie’s starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—especially the murder of her former roommate at a New Hampshire boarding school, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict athletic trainer Omar Evans, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there?

Orphan Robin Swift is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell where he trains for years to enroll in Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world’s center for translation and magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, and serves the Empire’s colonization. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide if revolution always requires violence.

Henry Turner knows that with his new title of captain for the hockey team, he absolutely cannot fail his difficult class with his least favorite professor. Enter Halle Jacobs, a fellow junior who befriends Henry when he accidentally crashes her book club. Too bad being a private tutor isn’t exactly ideal given her own studies, job, book club, and the novel she’s trying to write. But new experiences are the key to beating her writer’s block, and Henry’s promising to be the one to give them to her.

Raised in Los Angeles by a hippie mom, Alex Stern dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends and dead-end jobs. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Alex arrives at Yale tasked by her benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

At school, Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular, and she is proud and private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange connection grows between the two. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together.

Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her diving career. She has no time for relationships. Then she meets the aquatics golden boy, Lukas. When a well-guarded secret slips out, Scarlett and Lukas start an arrangement. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water.

If you like a seriously dark and gritty novel, this one’s for you. Under the influence of their charismatic teacher, a cult-like group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover new ways of thinking and living that is a world away from the norm. But as they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, they go beyond the boundaries of morality, resulting in the murder of a student. Now, they just have to not get caught.

College senior Charlotte Kingston is living two lives. By day, she’s the sorority girl, a student in biomedical engineering. At night, she’s Charlie: a daredevil looking for fun, chatting on a dating app with two anonymous hotties. Will Larsen may seem like the boy next door, but the last thing he wants is for anyone to find out him and his best friend Beckett Dunne sometimes share girls in the bedroom. When Charlie learns she’s been chatting with two Briar U hockey players, things get steamy―fast. But real life soon threatens to shatter the fantasy.

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her MFA program at New England’s Warren University. She is utterly repelled by the rest of her cohort—a clique of unbearable rich girls who call each other Bunny. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic “Workshop” where they conjure monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur.

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after 10 years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it. A decade ago, he was one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college. But the play spills dangerously into real life, and when one of them is found dead, the rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.

Summer Preston is caught between fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming a sport psychologist and staying as far away as possible from the hockey. Once she meets Aiden Crawford—well, let’s just say he confirms all her worst assumptions about hockey players. Summer can’t stand Aiden’s blasé approach to life, and Aiden doesn’t understand why she’s 25-years-old with a 25-year-plan. But their bickering soon turns to bantering—and once they let their guards down, there’s nothing to check their feelings.

Detective Cassie Maddox had transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad—until an urgent telephone call brings her back to an eerie crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra (Lexie) Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Suddenly, Cassie is back undercover, living as Lexie with her fellow grad student roommates, to find out not only who killed this young woman, but, more importantly, who she was.

Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to earn a place in the Alexandrian Society, the foremost secret society in the world. The chosen will secure a life of power and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each of the six newest recruits has their reasons for accepting the invitation—even if it means growing closer than they could have imagined to their most dangerous enemies. They will fight tooth and nail for the right to join the ranks of the Alexandrians.

No one would suspect that while everyone is dancing at college bars, shy Lily Calloway stays in the bathroom to get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands and regrettable decisions. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own. Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. For years, they’ve pretended to be in a relationship, hiding their addictions. As they cling harder to their destructive relationship, they realize their real vice may be each other.

In 1995, Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She befriends her classmate, Svetlana, and, by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, a mathematics student from Hungary. At the end of the school year, Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan’s friends. Selin’s summer in Europe isn’t the typical experiences of American college students. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself, the exhilarating confusion of first love, and the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted. The school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate…or die. The rules are simple: Don’t walk the halls alone and beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El 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. But her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

Eph Russell is an English professor up for tenure. His beloved Devon University has become a place of warring tribes, and the cultural rules are changing fast. Lulu Harris is an entitled freshman from Manhattan. But when things become socially difficult, Lulu is forced to channel her ambition in an unexpected way. Then there’s Red Wheeler, who is in his seventh year at Devon. As the alpha dog atop Devon’s hierarchy, Red is the most “woke” guy on campus. But when his position is threatened, he must take measures. What’s certain is that all these paths will collide in a riotous climax.

Murphy was supposed to be settling into her junior year at the University of Illinois with her best friend, Kat. Instead, she’s stuck living with her parents, failing the same class that kept her from graduating the first time around. That is, until a miracle appears in the form of Ellie Meyers, a former classmate. Their heavy flirting holds the promise of something more, until Murphy learns that Ellie’s mom is the professor preparing to flunk Murphy for a second semester in a row. Together, they hatch a fake relationship to get what they both want.

Rachel finds out Alison—her childhood rival—is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade. Rachel saw Alison the night she died and she said something she shouldn’t have. The next morning, Alison was gone. Plagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past.

To pursue her dream of making it in New York as a writer, Rosie finally leaves her hometown. But her plan is derailed when she ends up in class with her archnemesis and ex-crush, Aiden Huntington. Rosie and Aiden regularly go to verbal battle in class until their professor reaches her breaking point. She allows them to stay in her class on one condition: they must co-write a novel that blends their genres. Their manuscript-in-progress provides an outlet for them to confess their feelings—and explore their attraction toward each other.