Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of destruction at the hands of Al Qaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali. (Description from catalog)

The host of "CNN Newsroom Live" presents a definitive account of Boko Haram's 2014 abduction of two hundred seventy-six Chibok schoolgirls, sharing first-person insights based on the author's escape with twenty-one survivors. (Description from catalog)

This riveting narrative examines the world of the Somalian pirates: how they live, the forces that have created piracy in Somalia, how they spend the ransom money, and how they deal with their hostages. (Description from catalog)

Blending elements of reportage, memoir, and incantation, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers is a stunning investigation into the role of carrier pigeons in South African diamond smuggling. (Description from catalog)

The true story of a young African girl, Tupa Tjipombo, who was abducted from southwestern Africa and funneled through an extensive yet almost completely unknown human trafficking network spanning the entire African continent. (Description from NoveList.)

Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
(Description from catalog)

The astonishing true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenager from the slums of Kampala, Uganda, who, inspired by an unlikely mentor, a war refugee turned missionary, becomes an international chess champion. (Description from catalog)

Documents the author's journeys through Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, discussing the inspiration for her travels, the women who adopted her into their ranks, and her discoveries about the region's forgotten areas and future promise. (Description from NoveList)

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred yearslater, the uncovering of Egypt's ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry. In A World Beneath the Sands, the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. (Description from catalog.)

Explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra--women who ruled with real power. What was so special about ancient Egypt that provided women this kind of access to the highest political office? What was it about these women that allowed them to transcend patriarchal obstacles? What did Egypt gain from its liberal reliance on female leadership, and could today's world learn from its example? (Description from catalog)

In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa. In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa. In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa. (Description from catalog)

The award-winning author of Anatomy of a Disappearance describes his journey home to Libya after a 30-year absence due to his family's political exile and his father's kidnapping in Cairo, and his inextinguishable hopes that his father will be found alive. (Description from NoveList)

As gunshots, flames, and screams engulfed their village, three cousins fled into the cover of the forest. Across Sudan, between 1987 and 1989, tens of thousands of young boys took flight from these massacres. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live. This book is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. (Description from NoveList)

A biographical novel traces the story of Valentino Achak Deng, who as a boy was separated from his family when his village in southern Sudan was attacked, and became one of the estimated 17,000 "lost boys of Sudan" before relocating from a Kenyan refugeecamp to Atlanta in 2001. (Description from NoveList)

Tells the story of "Chucky" Taylor, a young American who lost his soul in Liberia, the country where his African father was a ruthless warlord and dictator. (Description from catalog)

The author shares her experiences of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States, shining the light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world. (Description from NoveList.)

A respected human-rights advocate shares the story of her unconventional alliance with a Ugandan general to stop a warlord whose resistance army had displaced millions, conscripted tens of thousands of child soldiers, and killed over one hundred thousand people. (Description from catalog)

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety.
(Description from catalog)

The author shares the story of her survival of the Gatumba massacre, despite losing her sister, and how after moving to America she found healing through art and activism. (Description from catalog)

A sequel to the best-selling Long Walk to Freedom completes the Nobel Prize Laureate's unfinished memoirs and is complemented by notes and speeches written by Mandela during his historic presidency. (Description from NoveList)

A memoir by the Somali-American Muslim Congresswoman describes her early experiences as a refugee and immigrant student, exploring the roles of her patriotism, friendships and faith on her resolve to restore moral compassion throughout Washington, D.C. (Description from NoveList.)

When Georgie and Darcy arrive in Kenya's Happy Valley for their honeymoon, one of the leaders in the community is found dead, forcing them to navigate the local aristocracy's wild parties and rampant infidelities to identify a killer in hiding.
(Description from NoveList)

Slasher meets satire, in this darkly comic novel set in Nigeria about a woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
(Description from catalog)

A brilliantly imagined historical fantasy in which a young con artist in eighteenth century Cairo discovers she's the last descendant of a powerful family of djinn healers. With the help of an outcast immortal warrior and a rebellious prince, she must claim her magical birthright in order to prevent a war that threatens to destroy the entire djinn kingdom.
(Description from catalog)

Harun, the brother of "the Arab" killed by Meursault in Albert Camus' "The Stranger," details the events that led to his brother's murder on an Algerian beach. (Description from NoveList)

Adunni, a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who longs for an education, must find a way for her voice to be heard loud and clear in a world where she and other girls like her are taught to believe, through words and deeds, that they are nothing. (Description from NoveList.)

A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds.
(Description from catalog)

Two half-sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations marked by wealth, slavery, war, coal mining, the Great Migration and the realities of 20th-century Harlem. (Description from NoveList.)

The drama of a U.S. missionary family in Africa during a war of decolonization. At its center is Nathan Price, a self-righteous Baptist minister who establishes a mission in a village in 1959 Belgian Congo. The resulting clash of cultures is seen through the eyes of his wife and his four daughters. (Description from catalog)

Raised by her father and the Kipsigis tribe in 1920s Kenya, Beryl endures painful losses before entering a passionate love triangle and discovering her unconventional true calling. (Description from NoveList)

Well-heeled travelers from around the world flock to the Mena House Hotel--an exotic gem in the heart of Cairo where cocktails flow, adventure dispels the aftershocks of World War I, and deadly dangers wait in the shadows.
(Description from catalog)

An "alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's ... colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. (Description from catalog)

Marion, fresh out of medical school, flees Ethiopia and makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him--nearly destroying him--Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. (Description from catalog)