A clock strikes midnight with deep notes. A man clad in back drags a mysterious person’s body down a coiling staircase and a voice asks in Italian: “Who is there” while statues of angels and gargoyles,...

Entranced in a dark-academia fog, The Secret History by Donna Tartt isn’t a difficult novel to get lost in. Since I shut its pages and seemingly left its world, it has been inextricably forged in my...