5 Books That Bring The Campus To Your Couch

September has arrived, and with it comes the push and pull between savoring the last bits of summer heat and going full fall mode. I tend to opt for the latter, and, for me at least, fall mode also means tapping into that first-day-of-school energy. With that in mind, the books below bring us back to campus. We’ve got a gothic horror about a prestigious school hiding macabre human experimentation, a college reunion-turned-time-traveling expedition to solve a friend’s mysterious death, a 1995 novel that became a gangbusters musical and soon-to-be-released movie, and, bringing the campus to your couch, a fascinating deep-dive into the history of crafting. (As a bonus, there’s also an August momfluencer thriller, which I didn’t get to highlight last month but is too good to miss.)

Something Old

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I’ve never seen the musical, but I do love a spectacle — so when the trailer for the film adaptation of Wicked came out three months ago, I got whipped up in excitement and decided to channel my enthusiasm into reading the source material: Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel about the systems of oppression and violence that turned Elphaba into the Wicked Witch of the West, from her radicalizing time at Shiz University to her years in forced exile. To be clear, I’ve been warned by many fans that the musical adaptation strays significantly from the novel, but the aspects that are unique to the book — the depth of its politics, the brutality, the tragic saga of Elphaba’s banishment — are what I loved most, and what kept me glued to the page.

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Elisabeth Thomas’s 2021 debut was one of my favorite releases of that year. The eerie speculative thriller follows Ines as she enters the titular Catherine House, a remote, elite college that all but guarantees a highly successful life in exchange for three years spent entirely cut off from the outside world. The school is also hiding a macabre experiment that takes advantage of the students’ deference to authority, but Ines refuses to play along. It’s a perfect blend of haunting gothic horror and cultural commentary, exploring autonomy, race, and power imbalances in academia.

Something New

The Midnight Club by Margot Harrison

In 1989 Vermont, one member of the Midnight Club — five close-knit friends and creators of Dunstan College’s literary magazine — drowns shortly after the group receives an anonymous submission titled “The Warning.” Twenty-five years later, the estranged survivors reconvene at former rebel Auraleigh’s invitation — an invitation that includes, shockingly, an opportunity to travel back in time to understand, and perhaps undo, the tragedy that’s haunted them for decades. It’s eerie and suspenseful, but fundamentally a poignant look at grief, regret, and friendship.

You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Jesse Q. Sutanto is known for creating spunky, beloved characters — the elderly tea shop owner-turned-amateur sleuth in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers; the titular aunties in Dial A for Aunties — but good luck finding a single person to root for in her first psychological thriller. This is not a criticism! It’s part of the fun. When an LA influencer’s protege becomes bigger than either of them imagined, the pair have a huge fallout, which leads to stalking and something even more sinister. Watching two increasingly desperate momfluencers go from frenemies to nemeses while trying to maintain relevance in the grotesque world of “authentic” content creation is chilling, but the schadenfreude is real. I read it in one day.

Something Out of the Blue

Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands

We can’t talk about school without talking about learning, but the best part about graduating is setting your own curriculum. Medieval historian Alexander Langlands’ 2017 deep-dive into making and makers is fascinating, comprehensive, and packed with knowledge. Blending travel narrative and industrial history, Cræft examines the ways cultural notions of artisanry, labor, and humanity’s relationship with the land have shifted over centuries.