Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A multi-generational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple--still madly in love after forty years--match wits, harbor grudges, and recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they've built. (Description from NoveList.)

1985: Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten―certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.
(Description from Amazon)

Mika Tabor, the baby of the family, learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her hardworking parents, her older sister, her retired grandparents and the community on Redwood Court, who are committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn't exist. The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she's given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn't privy to Mr. Smith's real identity, but she knows this job will be different.
(Description from catalog)

Ten years after being cleared of any involvement in the death of their friend while summering in Greece, Bess must decide if she wants to continue to support Joni, who is again tangled up in an eerily similar crime.--Description from NoveList

One Day meets Groundhog Day, in this heartwarming and emotionally poignant novel about a stressed woman who must relive the same day over and over, keeping her family and work life from imploding as she attempts to spare her husband from an unfortunate fate.--Description by NoveList

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house--and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling--go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden.
(Description from catalog)

Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door. High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she's built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage - and hoping that boredom won't kill her before the cancer does.
(Description from catalog)

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
(Description from Amazon)

After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers how far she'll go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
(Description from catalog)

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until now. She's just been dumped. She's just been fired. Her local café has run out of banana muffins. Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. Now, Cassie should be able to find a way to fix the life she accidentally obliterated. And with time on her side, how hard can it be? --Description by NoveList

A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz.--Description by NoveList

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for The Night Owls, the late night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she's long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success,and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life. But when Sally's friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actress who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show-and in society at large-who've gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women.
(Description from catalog)

Reunited when the elder's husband is sent to fight in World War II, French sisters Vianne and Isabelle find their bond as well as their respective beliefs tested by a world that changes in horrific ways. (Description from NoveList)

Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.
(Description from catalog)

A captivating psychological suspense debut about a young woman still haunted by her teenage best friend's death who learns of an eerily similar death and must find her way back to a cabin in the New England woods, armed only with hazy memories, to finally find out the truth that has eluded her.
(Description from catalog)

A novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici.
(Description from catalog)

Tiny Beautiful Things collects the best of Dear Sugar in one volume, bringing her wisdom to many more readers. This tenth-anniversary edition features six new columns and a new preface by Strayed. Rich with humor, insight, compassion-and absolute honesty-this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
(Description from catalog)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve 'American culture' in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic--including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet.
(Description from catalog)

A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters' ambitions for their own lives-set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco.
(Description from catalog)

An astonishing, compulsively twisty psychological thriller about a mother who witnesses her teenage son stab a man and then seizes on an unconventional way to try to save him.
(Description from Amazon)

Sharp-tongued (and secretly soft-hearted) Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake. An expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show, Brown Sugar, she’s made it her mission to make sure the women of the Afro-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of “situationships”, players, and heartbreak. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell” in front of every Blackwellian on campus, she finds her show and her reputation on the brink.
(Description from Amazon)

A stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
(Description from catalog)

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, until one day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip, and when she learns what the word means, she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
(Description from Amazon)

This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both at the same time. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another--and changed forever.
(Description from catalog)

Envisioned as a luxurious home-away from-home for Very Important People, The Home Group is a collection of celebrity members clubs dotted across the globe where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media. But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point. As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Home's members begin to wish they'd never RSVP'd at all.
(Description from catalog)

Every story has its secrets. Every mystery has its motives. "A long time ago, in another country, I nearly killed a woman. It's a particular feeling, the urge to murder. It takes over your body so completely, it's like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. There's a joy to it. In retrospect, it's frightening, but I daresay in the moment it feels sweet. The way justice feels sweet."
(Description from catalog)

"Hazel Sinnett is a medical student in 19th century Scotland who, after being kicked out because of her gender, works with new attractive acquaintance Jack Currer to procure dead bodies to study, but they soon discover secrets buried in the heart of Edinburgh society." (description from catalog)

The story of two Indian women, one a victim of a brutal crime and the other an Americanized journalist returning to India to cover the story, and the courage they inspire in each other.
(Description from catalog)

When talented grifter Lucky Armstrong discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, she must find a way to cash the winning ticket without the police arresting her for her past crimes.--Description by NoveList

A novel about belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.--Description by NoveList

When Anna, wondering who she really is, discovers that the African father she never knew is still alive, she embarks on a journey to a small nation in West Africa where she searches for her family's hidden roots.
(Description from catalog)

L.A. is parched and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters-Claudia, Olivia, and Patricia will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.
(Description from catalog)

Emily is having the time of her life--she's in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of their trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she'd been flirting with attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year's trip, when another backpacker wound up dead.
(Description from Amazon)

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace”—the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas.
(Description from Amazon)

Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling writer; Shane Hall is a reclusive, award-winning literary author. As high school seniors, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love before Shane disappeared from Eva's life--but they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since. When Eva and Shane meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly once again. Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart; but before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered... (Description from NoveList)

When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally - her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her.
(Description from catalog)

A producer at the Belfast bureau of the BBC, Tessa is at work one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground after the Good Friday agreement, but they never really went away, and lately, bomb threats, arms drops, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the anchor requests the public's help in locating those responsible for this latest raid - a robbery at a gas station - Tessa's sister appears on the screen.
(Description from catalog)

Moving their family to what they believe will be a safer but temporary home in Houston, two young parents are forced to choose between an undocumented status in America and returning to the violence of war-torn Bogataa.
(Description from catalog)

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Once a sanatorium treating tuberculosis patients, it was abandoned years ago and had fallen into disrepair. Long plagued by troubling rumours, it has recently been renovated into a lavish hotel. And an imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place detective Elin Warner wants to be.
(Description from catalog)

Merinac, Kansas. Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Frannie's have spent a century vying to serve up the best friend chicken in the state. The legendary feud between the owners-- the Moores and the Pogociellos-- has caught widow Amanda Moore in the middle. She had worked for her mom at Mimi's before marrying Frank Pogociello and working for Frannie's. When she convinces Food Wars, a reality-TV competition, to cover the feud, Amanda and her sister Mae must choose whether to fight with each other, or for their heritage. (Description from catalog)

A top law school graduate struggling with suicidal thoughts and an eating disorder describes her reluctant participation in a therapeutic support group that taught her the meaning of human connection and intimacy. (Description from catalog.)

An intelligent and funny debut about a relatable, indomitable heroine: a young seamstress in Ghana who agrees to an arranged marriage, only to realize that some compromises are too extreme to accept, illuminating what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world. (Description from catalog)

Margot Lee's mother isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to her, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds her mother dead under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the facts of Mina's life as a Korean War orphan and undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.
(Description from catalog)

Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, "I had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion. (Description from NoveList.)

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)

A talented henna artist for wealthy confidantes finds her efforts to control her own destiny in 1950s Jaipur threatened by the abusive husband she fled as a teenage girl. (Description from NoveList.)

An activist, speaker and philanthropist offers a memoir wrapped in a wake-up call that reveals how women can reclaim their true, untamed selves by breaking free of the restrictive expectations and cultural conditioning that leaves them feeling dissatisfied and lost. (Description from NoveList.)

A young woman raised on a remote island with a father who identifies the scents of the natural world makes illuminating discoveries about her identity and a mysterious cache of fragrances. (Description from NoveList.)

A story about race and privilege is centered around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. (Description from NoveList.)

An upper-class Edinburgh housewife who enjoys listening to the sordid details of true-crime podcasts has her world turned upside down when a new podcast turns out to have connections to her own dark past. (Description from catalog)

Volunteering for Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library in small-town Kentucky, an English bride joins a group of independent women whose commitment to their job transforms the community and their relationships. (Description from NoveList.)

A tale of spycraft, love and sacrifice inspired by the true story of Doctor Zhivago follows the efforts of two CIA agents to help publish Boris Pasternak's censored masterpiece against a backdrop of Cold War politics in Moscow. (Description from NoveList.)

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, a suspenseful new novel about an idyllic town in Maine dealing with the suspicious death of one of their own--and her best "summer" friend, who is trying to uncover the truth...before fingers point her way. (Description from catalog)

An adult debut by the author of the High School Horror series follows four women who speak out when their ill-reputed boss is slated to become CEO, a decision that triggers catastrophic shifts throughout every department of their company. (Description from NoveList.)

A poignant and transporting cross-cultural love story set against the lush backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hour. (Description from NoveList)

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. (Description from catalog.)

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
(Description from catalog)

Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries.
(Description from catalog)

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic ... and then her bus drives away. Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they "reunite" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus.
(Description from catalog)

Emily thinks Adam's perfect; the man she thought she'd never meet. But lurking in the shadows is a rival; a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.
(Description from catalog)

This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers. He also loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes. (Description from catalog)

Viewed with suspicion in the aftermath of a tragedy, a beautiful hermit who has survived for years in a marsh becomes targeted by unthinkable forces. (Description from NoveList)

A young editor at a Los Angeles art museum is pulled into the disturbing and dangerous world of a famous artist who goes missing on the opening night of her exhibition. (Description from NoveList)

A freelance writer returns to her grandmother’s homeland to fulfill her last wish to have her ashes scattered in Havana and discovers her family history amidst Cuba’s tropical beauty and dangerous political environment. (Description from NoveList)

Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough, Mark a handsome investment banker with big plans. Passionately in love, they embark on a dream honeymoon to the tropical island of Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water. . . . Suddenly the newlyweds must make a dangerous choice: to speak out or to protect their secret. After all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events. . . .(Description from catalog)

Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before.
(Description from catalog)

A California girl with wanderlust whose opposites-attract relationship with a homebody writer was significantly compromised by an unplanned pregnancy describes how their baby's serious health disorder prompted the couple to reevaluate their views of family and what they were willing to risk for their child's health. (Description from NoveList)

A life-changing book that uses new research to challenge old beliefs about belonging. (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)

Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder, Run, and Bel Canto, examines her deepest commitments--to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband--creating a resonant portrait of her life. (Description from catalog)

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man. Hundreds of years later, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Franny can read other people's thoughts and Vincent started looking for trouble the day he could walk. From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love.
(Description from catalog)

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
(Description from catalog)

Four girls are best friends and inseparable at Salten, a second-rate boarding school near the cliffs of the England Channel. They are notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies to both fellow boarders and faculty. Their little game has consequences when they soon learn their shared past was not as safely buried as they had once hoped.
(Description from catalog)

In 1947, pregnant Charlie St. Clair, an American college girl banished from her family, arrives in London to find out what happened to her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, and meets a former spy who, torn apart by betrayal, agrees to help her on her mission. (Description from NoveList.)

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
(Description from catalog)