The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Post-war England, a crumbling mansion, a mysterious family...a ghost?
The Uninvited Guests: A Novel by Sadie Jones. Totally a "dark and stormy night" novel: on the night of a birthday party, a nearby train accident interrupts the festivities and family fighting.Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. The coolest thing about this novel is that it is filled with strange photographs that the author actually collected from thrift and antique stores before weaving them into his strange story. I hear there is going to be a sequel.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I've read this dozens of time. A nonfiction account that reads like a novel, Berendt travels to Savannah, GA for a story and ends up staying, embroiled in an unsolved murder and totally engrossed in Savannah's odd cast of characters.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Ghost story and psychological thriller in novella form from one of the greats (remember the creepy short story "The Lottery"?).Have you read any mildly-creepy books lately? Leave your recs in the comments!
by Curtis Sittenfield. Prep is set in a prestigious New England boarding school and chronicles the experiences of Lee Fiora, boarding school newbie and scholarship outsider. This is a fast, fun read with spot-on descriptions of the boarding-school elite (or at least how I imagine them). Plus, the characters have awesomely old-money East Coast names, like Cross Sugarman.
by Marisha Pessl. This book is kinda bizarrely awesome. Also set in an elite boarding school (such a rich novelistic setting, boarding schools. A public school gal myself, I didn't even know they still existed outside of Switzerland until freshmen year of college when I discovered that something like 80% of my class had boarded), also has awesomely named characters (Blue van Meer), but this one contains a drawn out mystery and a mysterious clique. It got mixed reviewers for its obscure references and wordy prose, but I thought it was really clever and creative, a fresh take on the boarding-school trope.
by Wallace Stegner. A classic! Written in 1987 but set in the Depression and post-Depression years, Stegner follows the long friendship of two couples, one rich, one poor, both entrenched in the surprisingly-still-relevant publish-or-perish world of academia.
by Haruki Murakami. Not technically about schools or university perse, but Murakami is my favorite so I had to include him. This novel (now a film too, which I need to see!) is a coming-of-age story of university student Toru and his long-lasting love for two women, set against campus political upheavals.
by Kingsley Amis. Another classic! First published in 1954, brilliantly funny and featuring another set of professors: Jim is a history professor navigating the bizarre, stuffy, quirky world of the ivory tower.