Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

When college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up before graduation, they vowed to never speak to each other again. Ten years later, they find themselves back on their picturesque New England campus together for the first time for the wedding of mutual friends. Frankie is a music agent for the hottest bands of the late '90s and Ezra's ready to propose to his girlfriend after the wedding. Everything is going to plan. But when they wake up in bed next to each other the following morning with Ezra's grandmother's diamond on Frankie's finger, they have zero memory of how they got there or about any of the events that transpired the night before.
(Description from catalog)

Three best friends brought together by chance, bookshop owners Bree, Mikki, and Ashley each get a chance for a new beginning and a love to last a lifetime when they fight for what they really want.
(Description from catalog)

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. (Description from NoveList.)

Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington.
(Description from Amazon)

Dr. Briana Ortiz's life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother's running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that's probably going to the new doctor who's already registering eighty-friggin'-seven on Briana's 'pain in my ass' scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game...by sending Briana a letter. And it's a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn't actually Satan.
(Description from catalog)

Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance, is cast as her ne’er do well husband, Nora’s life will never be the same.
(Description from catalog)

Four years ago, Dylan and Addie fell in love under the Provence sun. Wealthy Oxford student Dylan was staying at his friend Cherry’s enormous French villa and Addie was spending her summer as the on-site caretaker. Two years ago, their relationship officially ended. They haven’t spoken since. Today, Dylan’s and Addie’s lives collide again. It’s the day before Cherry’s wedding, and Addie and Dylan crash cars at the start of the journey there.
(Description from Amazon)

A spoiled, tattooed rich man reluctantly agrees to become an assistant to two casually exploitative nonagenarians before unexpectedly catching the eye of the property's serious-minded manager.
(Description from catalog)

College student Cassie Soul hasn't spent an entire summer in Avalon Bay in years, not since her parents divorced and her mother spitefully whisked her away to Boston. Now that her grandmother is selling the boardwalk hotel that's been in their family forfive decades, Cassie returns to the quaint beach town to spend time with family, ring in her twenty-first birthday...and maybe find herself a summer fling.
(Description from catalog)

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple--until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things, both because she loves her husband and for the sake of their 8-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her license due to controversial methods. When the Bishops glide through Avery's door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course.
(Description from catalog)

An exciting new romantic suspense trilogy about a night that changed three women forever--but that none of them can remember. They were strangers when they met and are now friends with the same goal: to discover what was done to them that long-ago night-because whatever happened has left them all with mysterious new abilities...
(Description from catalog)

In desperate need of a lifeline while running her mother's lakeside resort, thirty-two-year-old Fern Brookbanks finds it in the form of Will Baxter, who rescued her nine years ago, and, believing he is hiding something, but knowing he's the only one who understands what she's going through, wonders if she can do the same for him.
(Description from catalog)

As the only female firefighter in her Texas firehouse, Cassie Hanswell is excellent at dealing with other people's tragedies. But she never anticipated that her estranged and ailing mother would ask her move to Boston. The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie's old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren't exactly thrilled to have a "lady" on the crew, even one as competent and smart as Cassie.
(Description from catalog)

Heather is happy-ish. She has a successful business, a cute but contemptuous cat, and best friends Daphne and Tori who know where she’s broken and love her anyway. So why does she feel crushed when her ex gets serious about someone new? No problem, she has a plan. More connections will hold her together while her world falls apart, so she finally reaches out to the stranger who might be her dad.
(Description from Amazon)

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. (Description from NoveList.)

The ultimate summer nostalgia read, about an engaged woman who comes face to face with her first love who she hasn't seen in fourteen years, but who she spent every summer with from age five to seventeen when he broke her heart, calling into question everything she thought she knew about their love story, and herself.
(Description from catalog)

Ox Matheson was twelve when his father taught him a lesson: Ox wasn't worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left. Ox was sixteen when the energetic Bennett family moved in next door, harbouring a secret that would change him forever. For the family are shapeshifters, who can transform into wolves at will. Drawn to their magic, loyalty and enduring friendships, Ox feels a gulf between this extraordinary new world and the quiet life he's known.
(Description from catalog)

The world of magick and the world of man have long been estranged from one another. But some can walk between the two-including Breen Siobhan Kelly. She has just returned to Talamh, with her friend, Marco, who's dazzled and disoriented by this realm-a place filled with dragons and faeries and mermaids (but no WiFi, to his chagrin).
(Description from catalog)

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.--Description by NoveList

"Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him--and face the consequences. In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. As civil war threatens, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself." (description from amazon.com)

When shy sixteen-year-old Helen Hamilton starts having vivid dreams about three ancient, hideous women and suddenly tries to kill a new student at her Nantucket high school, she discovers that she is playing out some version of an old tale involving Helen of Troy, the Three Furies, and a mythic battle. (description from Novelist)

"Seventeen-year-old cursebreaker Marlow Briggs reluctantly pretends to be in love with a powerful noble to gain entry into an illustrious--and deadly--society that holds clues to her mother's disappearance." (Description from catalog)

When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family, or even his own wife. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts and each year Adam's wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn't randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn't want them to live happily ever after.
(Description from catalog)

Seven Days. Seven Questions. Forever Changed. That's how The Eden Test, aweek-long getaway, advertises itself for couples in trouble. And that's what Daisy, a talented actress, has signed up for, in the hopes of saving her marriage. It's a tall order, seeing as her husband Craig plans on leaving her for another woman. In fact,his bags are packed in the back of the car as he drives to the cabin in the woods in upstate New York. But spending time together is nice and Craig enjoys the solitude of the cabin, the nearby lake, and the apple orchard. He'd even like the quirky small town, if it wasn't for a few locals calling him a city idiot. Maybe this could actually work?
(Description from catalog)

When her husband Jack vanishes without a trace, Nina Hayes will stop at nothing to uncover the truth, which, unbeknownst to her, is inextricably linked to their close friends, who may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing.
(Description from catalog)

When a teen falls while taking a selfie at the edge of a cliff, the last thing she sees before plummeting to her death is Katie Harmon, the nine-year-old girl she was babysitting, looking down at her. Investigators gather at the scene, and Katie's mother, Sara, rushes to comfort her daughter. Yet there's a small, secret ping of alarm in Sara's heart that she cannot share--though rookie detective Kim Pierce senses it.
(Description from catalog)

Emily Proudman's life is in chaos. She's just lost her acting agent and her job in one miserable day. Scott Denny has a problem. Even though he's a successful CEO, neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can come close to fixing it. He's at a breaking point. Until he meets Emily. Emily is friendly and agreeable. Emily is desperate. Emily is perfect.
(Description from catalog)

On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick's wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? (Description from catalog)

Some women get everything. Some women get everything they deserve. Amber Patterson is fed up. She's tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more--a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.
(Description from catalog)

Former Army brat Morgan Albright has finally planted roots in a friendly neighborhood near Baltimore. Her friend and roommate Nina helps her make the mortgage payments, as does Morgan's job as a bartender. But after she and Nina host their first dinner party-attended by Luke, the flirtatious IT guy who'd been chatting her up at the bar-her carefully built world is shattered. The back door glass is broken, cash and jewelry are missing, her car is gone, and Nina lies dead on the floor. Soon, a horrific truth emerges: It was Morgan who let the monster in.
(Description from catalog)

Jane and Marnie have been inseparable since they were eleven. Growing up, they shared everything and they wouldn't have had it any other way. Jane was always happiest when it was just the two of them. And even when Jane married the man of her dreams, somehow, Jonathan only added to Jane's life, without subtracting from the perfect equation of her friendship with Marnie. Until the day Jonathan was killed in a hit-and-run, and Jane's world shattered into a million pieces.
(Description from catalog)

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of bourbon, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is powerful; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.
(Description from Amazon)

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy-tales. Her twin sister Lacey was always the romantic, the one who daydreamed of being a princess. But it's adventure-seeking Bex who goes to Oxford and meets dreamy Nick across the hall - and thus Bex who accidentally finds herself in love with the eventual heir to the British throne.
(Description from catalog)

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn't want to get too close to anyone--she isn't sure her heart can take it. And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt's apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would've fallen head-over-heels for.
(Description from catalog)

"Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen. That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right. Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here. It's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up." (description from catalog)

In this witty and heartwarming romantic comedy, an awkward tech wunderkind on a reality dating show goes off-script when sparks fly with his producer. (Description from NoveList)

Luc O'Donnell is tangentially-and reluctantly-famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.
(Description from catalog)

Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky twin. Her life seems to be almost comically jinxed. By contrast, her sister Ami is an eternal champion...she even managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests. Unfortunately for Olive, the only thing worse than constant bad luck is having to spend the wedding day with the best man (and her nemesis), Ethan Thomas.
(Description from catalog)

Hunkering down with her sister in her fancy house in Sugar Land, along with her brother-in-law's family, as Hurricane Harvey bears down on Houston, single mom Jia Shah and her 12-year-old son, Ishaan, finds tensions escalating along with the storm, resulting in murder.
(Description from NoveList)

Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife. Angling for a promotion, she reluctantly agrees to an interview, a conversation that reveals secrets she thought she had long since buried. Then her interviewer disappears and she learns--from his devastated fiancée--that she was the last person to have seen him alive.
(Description from catalog)

It's New Year's Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh's best postcodes. The party's host, Tess, diagnosed with a terminal illness, saw this as a chance for her to make things right...in more ways than one. To organize a vow renewal with her drifting husband, Tess recruits her best friend and circuit court judge, Sylvie. Stalked by guilt, Sylvie struggles with the memory of a decade-old incident. She and Tess both know time is running out.
(Description from catalog)

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride's oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn't wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
(Description from catalog)

It would be easy to underestimate Chloe Sevre. She’s a freshman honor student, who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on yogalates, frat parties and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her. Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study of psychopaths. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires them to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements.
(Description from catalog)

Surviving a horrific multiple homicide, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks is unexpectedly offered a full scholarship to Yale, where her mysterious benefactors task her with monitoring the university’s secret societies. (Description from NoveList.)

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers' more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future.
(Description from catalog)

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple--until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things, both because she loves her husband and for the sake of their 8-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her license due to controversial methods. When the Bishops glide through Avery's door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course.
(Description from catalog)

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can't move. She can't speak. She can't open her eyes. Though she can hear everyone around her, no one knows because she's in a coma. But she doesn't remember what happened. And she has a sneaking suspicion her husband had something to do with it.
(Description from catalog)

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and hasn’t woken up since. Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.” Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and his methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O" case. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.
(Description from NoveList)

An actress who is caught in a cycle of horror stemming from a role she played -- that of a girl burned at the stake for witchcraft -- sees her chance to finally be free of her curse when a true crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. (Description from NoveList.)

Private detective Gates Foster is a father is in search of his missing daughter, and sound engineer Mitzi harbors a secret that may help him solve the case. It's Mitzi's job to create the dubbed screams used in horror films and action movies. She's the best at what she does. But what no one in Hollywood knows is the screams Mitzi produces are harvested from the real, horror-filled, blood-chilling screams of people in their death throes.
(Description from catalog)

Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
(Description from catalog)

An arresting debut thriller set in contemporary Cambodia, about an American woman who disappears into the Phnom Penh underworld, and the photojournalist who tracks her through the clues left in her diary. (Description from catalog)

The tale of Kvothe, from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages, you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But this book is so much more, for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend. (Description from catalog)

Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from stories, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin, a High Lord of the faeries. As her feelings toward him transform from hostility to a fiery passion, the threats against the faerie lands grow. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse or she will lose Tamlin forever. (Description from catalog)

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered: There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won't allow its students to leave until they graduate . . . or die. The rules are deceptively simple: Don't walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.
(Description from catalog)

They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser that has felt too true for the last decade, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart. Until the day she gets a call that sends her racing back to Barry's Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek.
(Description from catalog)

Oceanside, Washington. After their mother died and their father was lost in grief, Willa had no choice but to raise her sister, Harper, and their brother, Lucas. She put her own life on hold to nurse Harper through a terrifying illness. Now Willa has realized her dream of running her own bakery and coffee shop, and Harper announces her plan to summit Mount Rainier.
(Description from catalog)

In the irresistible new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted and Something Borrowed, a young woman falls hard for an impossibly perfect man before he disappears without a trace. . . . (Description from NoveList.)

During the snowstorm of the century Levi Cutler is stranded on a ski lift with a beautiful stranger named Jane. After strong winds hurl the gondola in front of them into the ground, Levi calls his parents to prepare them for the worst…but can’t bring himself to say goodbye. Instead, wanting to fulfill his mother’s lifelong wish, he impulsively tells her he’s happily settled and Jane is his girlfriend—right before his phone dies.
(Description from Amazon)

Longtime personal assistant Georgie Mulcahy has made a career out of putting others before herself. When an unexpected upheaval sends her away from her hectic job in L.A. and back to her hometown, Georgie must confront an uncomfortable truth...But then Georgie comes across a forgotten artifact--a 'friendfic' diary she wrote as a teenager...a guidebook for getting started on a new path.
(Description from catalog)