Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an expose of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day.
(Description from catalog)

Make the most of your trip to the Windy City with DK Eyewitness Top 10. Planning is a breeze with our simple lists of ten, covering the very best that Chicago has to offer and ensuring that you don't miss a thing. Best of all, the pocket-friendly format is light and easily portable, the perfect companion while out and about.
(Description from Amazon)

At once incendiary and icy, mischievous, and provocative, celebratory and elegiac, a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of the author's rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned to distance itself from whites and the black generality, while tirelessly measuring itself against both. (Description from catalog)

A history of America's most famous brothel, Chicago's Everleigh Club, which catered to some of America's leading moguls, actors, and writers from 1900 to 1911, profiles its aristocratic proprietors and their efforts to elevate the industry to new heights. (Description from NoveList)

An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett. (Description from NoveList)

The John Hancock Center. Marina City. Sandburg Village. The Sears Tower. The Inland Steel Building. From skyline-defining icons to wonders of the world, the second period of the Chicago skyscraper transformed the way Chicagoans lived and worked. The Second Chicago School dominates many histories of the era. Yet these accounts often overlook essential Chicago sites, important areas away from downtown, the teams of people involved in the conception and construction of skyscrapers, and the financial, social, racial, and political factors that influenced the buildings that came to be. Thomas Leslie's comprehensive look at the modern era of Chicago skyscrapers rewrites the narrative to view the skyscraper idea, and the buildings themselves, within the broad expanse of city history.
(Description from catalog)

Documents the harrowing twelve-day period in Chicago in 1919 during which a blimp crash, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder case challenged the city's modernization efforts. (Description from catalog)

When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. Jordan is smart and aggressive and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations and giving a voice to the voiceless.
(Description from Amazon)

Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from a California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone and they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide, in part because the coroner's examination revealed Rose had recently had an abortion. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life, nor can she imagine Rose carelessly getting pregnant.
(Description from catalog)

A novel set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris follows the director of a Chicago art gallery and a woman looking for her estranged daughter in Paris who both struggle to come to terms with the ways AIDS has affected their lives. (Description from NoveList)

When the Pied Piper returns, leaving his special calling card on the bodies of his brutally murdered victims, Detective Lauren Medina is torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe and keeping a promise she made long ago to him.
(Description from NoveList)

The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for deadbefore penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no trace of him, many believe that he's gone for good. Not Grace Harper. A grocery store manager by day, at night Grace uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group. She believes the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods that he hunted in, and if she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity.
(Description from catalog)

Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late 1960s Chicago, and narrated by 10-year-old Karen Reyes, Monsters is told through a fictional graphic diary employing the iconography of B-movie horror imagery and pulp monster magazines. As the precocious Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her beautiful and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, we watch the interconnected and fascinating stories of those around her unfold. (Description from catalog)