Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

In a village in northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.
(Description from catalog)

In 1918, field nurse Laura Iven returns to Belgium to uncover the truth about her brother Freddie's supposed death in combat, while Freddie, unable to return to the killing fields, take refuge with a mysterious man who has the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.
(Description from NoveList)

In Navola, a city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, Davico di Regulai must demonstrate his mastery of Navolese diplomacy as he prepares to take the reins of power from his father, which reveals his fate depends on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister.
(Description from NoveList)

In the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position. Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain.
(Description from NoveList)

A brilliantly imagined historical fantasy in which a young con artist in eighteenth century Cairo discovers she's the last descendant of a powerful family of djinn healers. With the help of an outcast immortal warrior and a rebellious prince, she must claim her magical birthright in order to prevent a war that threatens to destroy the entire djinn kingdom.
(Description from catalog)

While trying to settle into a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural, Amina al-Sirafi, one of the Indian Ocean's most notorious pirates, is offered a job she cannot refuse, but soon discovers this final chance at glory comes with a high price--her soul.
(Description from catalog)

In the early 1900s, a curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town to study faerie folklore, where she discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on dryadology, the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--much less get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers.
(Description from catalog)

In Victorian London, where traveling sideshows are the very pinnacle of entertainment, there is no more coveted ticket than Ashe and Pretorius' Carnivale of Curiosities. Each performance is a limited engagement, and London's elite boldly dare the dangerous streets of Southwark to witness the Carnivale's astounding assemblage of marvels. For a select few, however, the real show begins behind the curtain. Rumors abound that the show's proprietor, Aurelius Ashe, is more than an average magician.
(Description from catalog)

Arriving at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, a gifted young knight Collum, instead finds only a handful of knights left after the Battle of Camlann, and together, joined by Merlin's apprentice Nimue, set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.--Description from NoveList

A young noblewoman must pair up with an alleged witch to ward off a curse in this sapphic romance set 1814. (Description from catalog)

Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals. (Description from catalog)

England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness-a man made of smoke. Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a brutal childhood in Mississippi, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When a jaded female detective is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.
(Description from catalog)

Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways. (Description from catalog)

Making a Faustian bargain to live forever but never be remembered, a woman from early eighteenth-century France endures unacknowledged centuries before meeting a man who remembers her name.
(Description from catalog)

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society - she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
(Description from catalog)

Chava, a golem brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, and Ahmad, a jinni made of fire, form an unlikely friendship on the streets of New York until a fateful choice changes everything. (Description from catalog)

Marrying a Scottish warrior, Lady Macbeth must use all her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive his hostile, suspicious court but unbeknownst to her, he has occult secrets of his own and a prophecy that girds him like armor, making her magic even more dangerous as it threatens the order of the world.--Description from NoveList