Looking for a back-to-school book list?

If you’re like us, when the beginning of September comes around, all those back-to-school memories start flooding back, and, well, OOF. So we put together a list of books, AKA vessels for all that scholastic AAH-nxiety.

If boarding schools are your jam (or the opposite of that), Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar features (fellow) Plath-lovers and supernatural books to the past with a side of dead lover’s ghost, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go shows you all the awkward friend group politics and institutional power you need to validate that feeling that screams “never take me back!” And if you want to remember the weird old days with a coming-of-age story, we’ve got Marjane Satrapi’s epic graphic memoir Persepolis, Stephen King’s classic early September, last-ditch adventure novella The Body, and for a heavier, true events turn, Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning, critical novel The Nickel Boys.

And for those who want to relive the past, but like, in a fun way, there’s Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism—set in ‘80s high school for all you retro horror hounds and scaredy cats—and Kiese Laymon’s Long Division, featuring a spelling bee-like contest that might change literally everything. Happy reading!

Check out our end of summer reading list on bookshop.org here!