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Knopf paid four hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a first novel by a twenty-eight-year-old, and it opens by telling you who died and who killed him, then spends five hundred pages on why that does not help. Tartt has published three books in thirty-three years — 1992, 2002, 2013 — and won the Pulitzer for the third. Ten years is a long time between books, which is why people arrive at a page like this. The writers below split the inheritance up: some have the closed group and the buried body, some have the ornate untrustworthy narrator, one wrote the Bennington novel from the other side of the same campus at the same time.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Dark academia · Long novels · A decade apart · Updated September 2026
Quick answer
If you want the closest match to The Secret History, read M. L. Rio's If We Were Villains — the same machine, Shakespeare instead of Greek. Tana French's The Likeness is the closed group with the camera turned round, from the outsider's side. For where the form comes from, read Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Nabokov's Pale Fire. And for the other Bennington novel, written at the same time by the man she dedicated her book to, read Bret Easton Ellis.
10 authors like Donna Tartt
Where to start if you loved Donna Tartt
If you want the closest match, read M. L. Rio.
If We Were Villains is the same machine with Shakespeare instead of Greek. Warmer, faster, and it knows exactly what it is doing.
If you want it from the outside, read Tana French.
The Likeness puts a detective inside a closed household of students. Same seduction, opposite vantage point.
If you want where it comes from, read Waugh and Nabokov.
Brideshead Revisited for the engine, Pale Fire for the narrator you should not trust.
If you want the other Bennington novel, read Bret Easton Ellis.
The Rules of Attraction is the same campus in the same years, told flat and funny. She dedicated her book to him.
If you want another long one, read Eleanor Catton.
The Luminaries is 832 pages, structurally ridiculous in the best way, and won the Booker.
If you want her own three books first
My guide to Donna Tartt has all three, and what the ten-year gaps actually contain.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Donna Tartt
Who writes books most like Donna Tartt?
M. L. Rio's If We Were Villains (2017) is the closest single book to The Secret History — a small group of over-invested students, a death, and a narrator confessing a decade later. Tana French's The Likeness (2008) is the same situation from the outside. For the tradition Tartt is writing in rather than a modern echo, read Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Nabokov's Pale Fire.
Is Donna Tartt writing a fourth novel?
She has said she is, and that is all anyone actually knows. In December 2023 she was asked directly by The Queen's Reading Room whether she was working on a new novel and answered, in full, “I am.” There is no title, no publisher and no date. Be careful with what you find online: a Goodreads listing in May 2023 claimed a June 2023 release, and her agent Nicole Aragi told Publishers Lunch that this was not true and had it removed. A search for “Tartt fourth novel” also turns up Contrapposto, which is by Dave Eggers.
What should I read after The Secret History?
If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio if you want the same shape immediately. The Likeness by Tana French if you would rather it be a proper crime novel. Brideshead Revisited if what you loved was the class dynamic and the narrator's longing to belong. And The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, which is the same college in the same years written by the friend she dedicated the book to.
Why does Donna Tartt only publish every ten years?
Three novels in thirty-three years: The Secret History in 1992, The Little Friend in 2002 and The Goldfinch in 2013, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. She has never given a mechanical explanation beyond the length of time the books take her, and she gives very few interviews. The practical consequence for a reader is that there are only three, and this page exists because that is not many.
Are there books like The Secret History that are not dark academia?
Yes, and they are often the better recommendation. Highsmith's Ripley novels have the guilt without the campus. Bolaño's The Savage Detectives has the self-mythologising young group without the Greek. John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany has the New England adolescence and the death announced in advance. Dark academia is a shelving category; what Tartt actually writes is a novel about a closed group and what it costs to have been let in.
Which Donna Tartt novel should I read first?
The Secret History (1992), and it is not close. It is the book that made her, it is the one every recommendation on this page is measured against, and the other two assume you have met her voice. The Goldfinch (2013) is the Pulitzer winner and the most conventionally satisfying. The Little Friend (2002) is the one readers argue about.
Sources
- Donna Tartt — The Queen's Reading Room Q&A, 11 December 2023
- Tartt's agent debunks rumours of a new novel — Publishers Lunch, 31 May 2023
- The Goldfinch — Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014
- Donna Tartt — Wikipedia
List last reviewed 5 September 2026.
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“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History.
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