Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe. When a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent.
(Description from NoveList)

In the vein of Neal Stephenson and Jeff VanderMeer, an epic speculative novel from Young Lions Fiction Award-finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity's unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.
(Description from catalog)

It’s thirty years from now. We’re slowly but surely making progress. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go? For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's an overwhelming fact of life and the effort is global. But there are still those Americans who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?
(Description from Amazon)

A hopeful climate crisis novel exploring the possibilities of our near future and humanity's capacity for change, about one family trying to protect each other and the place we all call home.
(Description from catalog)

When her husband murders their son and abducts their daughter, grief-stricken and vengeful Essun pursues him across The Stillness, a vast and dynamic super-continent on the brink of catastrophe that will usher in a "fifth season," a time of uncertainty and hardship. But Essun is as formidable as the land she traverses -- she's an orogene, which means that she can shape the contours of the land. Although she's spent much of her life hiding from those who would kill her on account of her race, Essun is about to prove how dangerous a woman on a mission can be. (Description from NoveList.)

Tired of living on a failing farm and suffering oppressive poverty, bored housewife Dellarobia Turnbow, on the way to meet a potential lover, is detoured by a miraculous event on the Appalachian mountainside that ignites a media and religious firestorm that changes her life forever. (Description from catalog)

The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what's left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it's hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won't be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world.
(Description from catalog)

After a wildfire consumes their home in present-day Greece, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her forever, while her husband Tasso, unable to paint due to the burns on his hands, finds hope for the future in his young daughter.
(Description from NoveList)

Dominic Salt and his three children are the last caretakers of Shearwater, an island near Antarctica, home to the world's largest seed bank. As they endure rising sea levels and isolation, a mysterious woman, Rowan, washes ashore during a severe storm. Nursing Rowan back to health, the Salts find hope, but secrets surface.
(Description from NoveList)

In the far north of Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is building a project called Camp Zero. With its fresh, clean air and cold climate, it's intended to be the beginning of a new community and a new way of life. A brilliant and determined young woman employed as a sex worker to the elite is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group meant to service the men in camp-but her mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
(Description from catalog)

Security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.
(Description from Amazon)

The story of a Chinese American chef who, lured to a decadent, enigmatic colony of the super rich in a near future in which food is disappearing, discovers the meaning of pleasure and the ethics of who gets to enjoy it, altering her life and, indirectly, the world.
(Description from catalog)