Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know. (Description from catalog)

Details the unique life of a woman who went from husband and father, to drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, and trophy wife to a trauma cleaner who brings order to chaotic crime scenes. (Description from NoveList)

For decades, the US military has been contaminating the Pacific region with toxic substances. Thousands of service members, their families, and local residents have been exposed-but the US has hidden the damage and refused to help victims. This book reveals the enormous extent of contamination and the lengths the Pentagon will go to conceal it. (Description from catalog.)

Bryson shares accounts of his travels in Australia, which has the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife on the planet. (Description from NoveList)

When a catastrophic wildfire suddenly rips through a woman's hometown, she thinks she is lucky to have survived...until she finds a dead woman in her driveway, clutching a piece of paper with her name on it. (Description from catalog)

A woman is desperate to discover what happened to her sister on her solo road trip through the Australian outback.
(Description from NoveList)

In the aftermath of crushing grief, sole parent Kate Whittaker must learn to live and love again. When Kate and her boss, Hugh, become stranded in a sleepy hamlet north of Byron Bay, she finally has a chance to process all that she's been through and all that the future might hold.
(Description from NoveList)

It's not just secrets buried at Wild Meadows. For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance of a happy family life. But their childhood wasnt the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?--Description by NoveList

Leaving London behind, Margery Benson, a schoolmarm and spinster in 1950, embarks on a quest to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession – the golden beetle of New Caledonia – with the help of a fun-loving assistant who changes her life forever. (Description from NoveList)

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
(Description from catalog)

In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him. As they scour the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly—newlyweds, farmers, mothers, indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, artists, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen—confront their relationships, both with one another and with the land­scape they inhabit.
(Description from catalog)

A woman stands up on a plane, and predicts when everyone will die. Everyone laughs it off until it starts to come true.
(Description from catalog)

Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. Then he meets Rosie, who is everything he's not looking for in a wife, but she ends up his friend as he helps her try and find her biological father. (Description from catalog)