Hell Bent

Alex Stern has made it through her first year at Yale, but at a cost: her mentor, Daniel Darlington, is trapped in a hell dimension, and every rule of Lethe House says rescuing him is impossible. Alex has never been good at following rules.

Assembling an unlikely crew, she goes looking for a way to break into hell and bring Darlington back — even as a series of murders among Yale's faculty points to something monstrous moving through New Haven. As the two mysteries converge, Alex has to navigate demons both literal and institutional.

The second book in Leigh Bardugo's Alex Stern series deepens its dark-academia world with a heist-like descent into the underworld. Content note: it depicts violence and sexual assault.