Harvard Square / by André Aciman
An Egyptian-Jewish Harvard graduate student trying to assimilate into American culture in 1977 befriends an impetuous, loud Arab cab driver and must choose between his dream or his friend.
Lucky Jim / by Kingsley Amis
A hilarious satire of British university life. Jim has accidentally fallen into a job at one of the new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons as long as Jim can keep in with eccentric Professor Welch, survive a madrigal-singing weekend, deliver a lecture on ‘Merrie England’ and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch’s awful son, Bertrand.
The Idiot / by Elif Batuman
Embarking on her freshman year at Harvard in the early tech days of the 1990s, a young artist and daughter of Turkish immigrants begins a correspondence with an older mathematics student from Hungary while struggling with her changing sense of self, first love and a daunting career prospect.
Wonder Boys / by Michael Chabon
Grady Tripp, an obese, aging writer who has lost his way, struggles with debauched editor Terry Crabtree to renew friendship, a sense of adventure, and a sense of purpose to life.
My Education / by Susan Choi
Warned about the womanizing activities of Professor Nicholas Brodeur before her arrival at his prestigious university, graduate student Regina Gottlieb is nevertheless captured by his charisma and good looks before falling prey to his volatile wife.
The Virgins / by Pamela Erens
Two students at a private boarding school, Aviva, who seeks liberation from the memory of an unhappy childhood, and Seung, who wants to rebel from demanding parents, enter into an intense relationship which intrigues everyone around them.
The Marriage Plot / by Jeffrey Eugenides
Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while at the same time an old friend of hers resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.
The Secret Place / by Tana FrenchInvestigating a photograph of a boy whose murder was never solved, aspiring Murder Squad member Stephen Moran partners with detective Antoinette Conway to search for answers in the cliques and rivalries at a Dublin boarding school.
The Art of Fielding / by Chad Harbach
A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president’s daughter.
A Separate Peace / by John Knowles
Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II. What happens between two boys, Phineas and Gene, one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
Admission / by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Thirty-eight-year old Portia Nathan, a Princeton University admissions officer, must decide whether or not to confront the truth when a life-altering decision from her past resurfaces.
Galatea / by Richard Powers
Richard Powers, a Humanist-in-Residence at the Center for Advanced Scientific Research, gets involved with a project to train a machine to pass a comprehensive exam in English literature–and with the degree candidate against whom the machine is competing.
Normal People / by Sally Rooney
The unconventional secret childhood bond between popular Connell and lonely, intensely private Marianne is tested by character reversals in their first year at a Dublin college that render Connell introspective and Marianne social, but self-destructive.
Prep / by Curtis Sittenfeld
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding schools glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
On Beauty / by Zadie Smith
Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son’s engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon.
The Secret History / by Donna Tartt
Richard Papen, a relatively impoverished student at a New England college, falls in with an exclusive clique of rich, worldly Greek scholars and soon learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together.
Stoner / by John Williams
Born the child of a poor farmer in Missouri, William Stoner is urged by his parents to study new agriculture techniques at the state university. Digging instead into the texts of Milton and Shakespeare, Stoner falls under the spell of the unexpected pleasures of English literature, and decides to make it his life. Stoner is the story of that life.
Old School / by Tobias WolffDuring his senior year at an elite New England prep school, a young man who had struggled to fit in with his contemporaries finds his life unraveling due to the school’s obsession with literary figures and their work.
Sleepwalking / by Meg Wolitzer
A story of three college students with shared fascination with poetry and death, and how one of them must face difficult truths in order to leave her obsession behind.
Between the Lines 