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Dark academia makes an appearance on our reading list every fall; today we’re delving into a new niche of the moody genre. For readers who crave something lighter, the year’s biggest memoir comes out today. Plus, four books about the joy and complexity of lifelong friendships. |
| The Trope |
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Dark Academia: Reunion Edition |
The Trope A tight-knit group of college friends is involved in a tragedy during their student days. They go their separate ways, each staying mum about the dark secret, until a reunion brings them back together and their vow of silence begins to fray. The intensity of young adult friendships and the way the festering secrets corrode character’s lives makes this trope a winner. Elly Griffiths’ mystery Bleeding Heart Yard, out today, is the newest in a recent spate of reunion thrillers.
The Inspiration Thick with atmosphere, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is the original campus thriller. In her seminal novel, the friendship and its secrets unravel over a single season; more recent takes on the trope give the characters more time to be consumed by their guilt.
Here are three more thrilling reunion recommendations: |
| Bleeding Heart Yard | At college in the 1990s, Cassie and her friends killed a fellow student, then carried on with their lives, becoming mostly happy and successful. When a member of their group is found dead at their 30th reunion, the secret they all swore to forget threatens to come to light. | | Paid Link |
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| In My Dreams I Hold a Knife | For her 10th college reunion, Jessica Miller is planning a triumphant return to the campus she left after the murder of a friend. But she’s not the only one coming back, and one of the six friends there the night that Heather died wants to see justice done. | | Paid Link |
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| They Did Bad Things | In the fall of 1994, six university students moved into a house together. Nine months later, one of them was dead, a death that the police ruled accidental. The housemates know the truth, though, and when they’re lured to a remote island and confronted with evidence from the scene, it becomes clear that someone else knows the truth too. | | Paid Link |
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| The Highlight |
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“When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it.” | |
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| The Light We Carry | Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2018 Becoming is one of the bestselling memoirs of all time. Now she’s back with a book that combines personal stories with advice about navigating the modern world with kindness and joy. | | Paid Link |
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| 20 Words: Guess The Novel |
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A lonely but intelligent man in a desperate situation innovates several new agricultural techniques to prolong his chances of survival. | |
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Answer in footer |
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| The Stack |
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Fierce Female Friendships |
Elena Ferrante has made her career by writing about the intricacies of female friendships. They can be messy. And intense. In Catherine Newman’s 2022 book We All Want Impossible Things, best friends reminisce about their 40-year friendship in a hospice room as one of them prepares to die. Here are three more novels that explore the complicated, compelling and changing nature of friendships between women. |
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| Fiona and Jane | In stories told in alternating voices, Fiona and Jane explores the powerful friendship between two young Asian-American women as they navigate coming of age in contemporary America. | | Paid Link |
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| Girls They Write Songs About | When Charlotte and Rose meet at a music magazine in the late nineties, they embark on a convoluted journey of friendship that will see them through their youth in New York, great loves, career failures, marriage, motherhood and divorce. | | Paid Link |
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| These Impossible Things | Three best friends who grew up together in a close-knit Muslim community, reckon with love, life and the one night that changes their friendship in this love letter to female friendship. | | Paid Link |
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| Bookmarks |
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Critical Love Critics are drooling over the “utterly delicious” (Booklist) new memoir from podcast host Rabia Chaudry, which Publishers Weekly calls “an ebullient tale of self-acceptance.” |
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| Fatty Fatty Boom Boom | Rabia Chaudry’s memoir explores her childhood as a Pakistani immigrant in the US, her lifelong struggle with weight, and her journey to loving herself. | | Paid Link |
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Best Seller Stephanie Plum returns to the bestseller list—and her life of legally dubious adventures—in the newest entry in Janet Evonvich’s sexy, hilarious series. |
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| Going Rogue | When her office manager Connie is kidnapped and held for ransom, Stephanie Plum, her feisty grandmother Mazur, her sometimes-boyfriend Morelli, and her gun-toting pal Lula have 24 hours to track down the kidnappers and save Connie’s life. | | Paid Link |
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| Page to Screen |
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