Books like Ninth House
What should you read after Leigh Bardugo’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Leigh Bardugo
- 2019
- 458 pages
- Dark academia
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Ninth House
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
The book Ninth House keeps nodding at: a scholarship outsider absorbed into a closed elite that has already done something unforgivable in the name of ritual.
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Yale in gothic detail
- No magic, only classics
Great matchA Discovery of Witches
Deborah Harkness
Magic treated as an academic discipline with archives, hierarchies and very old money. Slower than Bardugo, and considerably more romantic.
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Yale in gothic detail
- Vampire romance drives it
Best for the society itselfThe Atlas Six
Olivie Blake
Six candidates, one library of forbidden knowledge, and a place for only five of them. The Lethe premise with the ethics openly on the table.
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Privilege insulated by magic
- A mentor who vanishes
- Talk-heavy, thin plot
Great matchCity of Stairs
Jackson Bennett
An investigator sent into a city whose miracles have been outlawed, unpicking a scholar's murder. Alex's job, in secondary-world form.
- A mentor who vanishes
- Rituals with a body count
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Invented world, no campus
Best for the ghost-seeingThe Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater
A girl who has grown up around psychics falls in with private-school boys hunting a dead king. Bardugo's class friction and second sight, softer and stranger.
- A narrator who sees the dead
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Two timelines converging
- YA, less explicit
Great matchThe Bone Season
Samantha Shannon
A clairvoyant conscripted by a system that classifies people like her by usefulness. Same bargain Alex takes, with less choice in it.
- A narrator who sees the dead
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Heavy terminology up front
Best for the detective workMagic for Liars
Sarah Gailey
A private investigator without magic works a murder at a magical academy where her sister teaches. Ninth House's plot, wry and half the length.
- Rituals with a body count
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Under 350 pages
Great matchThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
A magical education that turns out to be a graduate programme full of unhappy, gifted people. The disillusion Bardugo shares, done first.
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Trauma written without flinching
- Hard to like anyone
Worth a look — with a warningShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
Same author, far earlier: an overlooked girl discovers a power that makes her valuable to people who collect powerful things.
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Secret societies doing real magic
- YA, much lighter
Best for Bardugo at her bestSix of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
The Bardugo book to read if you liked Alex's competence and her criminal past. Six damaged specialists, one impossible job, no wasted scenes.
- Trauma written without flinching
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Two timelines converging
- No campus, no ghosts
Great matchVicious
V.E. Schwab
Two graduate students test a theory about near-death experiences and become monsters about it. Ambition, academia and consequence, in Bardugo's register.
- Two timelines converging
- Rituals with a body count
- Privilege insulated by magic
- Superhero framing
Worth a look — with a warningThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Included for the magic-as-inherited-obligation thread, though it is a mood piece where Ninth House is a murder investigation.
- Secret societies doing real magic
- Yale in gothic detail
- Almost no plot tension
Great matchAmerican Gods
Neil Gaiman
Old power operating under modern America, negotiated by someone who has been in prison and expects nothing. Alex's outsider stance, on a bigger map.
- Privilege insulated by magic
- A narrator who sees the dead
- Road novel, no institution
What should you read after Ninth House?
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Secret History by Donna Tartt — the book Ninth House keeps nodding at: a scholarship outsider absorbed into a closed elite that has already done something unforgivable in the name of ritual.
If what stayed with you was secret societies doing real magic, read A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness instead: magic treated as an academic discipline with archives, hierarchies and very old money. Slower than Bardugo, and considerably more romantic. The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is the other strong option — six candidates, one library of forbidden knowledge, and a place for only five of them. The Lethe premise with the ethics openly on the table.
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