Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.
(Description from catalog)

San Francisco 1866: An Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie.
(Description from NoveList)

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)

A midwife and conjurer of curses reflects on her life before and after the Civil War, her relationships with the families she serves and the secrets she has learned about a plantation owner's daughter.

Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war. It does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester.
(Description from Amazon)

Follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California.
(Description from NoveList)

Sixteen-year-old slave Junie tends to master's daughter Violet at Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, but when Violet's potential marriage leads Junie to commit a desperate act that rouses sister Minnie's spirit, she enlists coachman Caleb's help as horrifying secrets are revealed.
(Description from NoveList)

"England, 1535. Women -- even the privileged few who can read and write -- have little independence. Agnes Peppin, daughter of a butcher, left her family in disgrace and is living out her days behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. As assistant to the Abbess she becomes integrated into the unstable royal landscape of King Henry VIII. As he proclaims himself the new head of the Church, religious houses are being subjugated; the Abbey is no exception. Free to be the master of her own fate, Agnes must use her wits and test her moral convictions against her need to survive by any means necessary."

Angrboda's story begins where most witch's tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to give him knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him grows reluctantly into a deep and abiding love. Their union produces three unusual children who she is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye.
(Description from catalog)

Two half-sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations marked by wealth, slavery, war, coal mining, the Great Migration and the realities of 20th-century Harlem. (Description from NoveList.)

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago.
(Description from NoveList)

Zora Neale Hurston's unpublished novel offers a reimagined portrayal of Herod the Great, not as the notorious villain of the New Testament, but as a philosophical and visionary king who brought prosperity to Judea during a tumultuous period of war and imperial expansion in the first century BCE.
(Description from NoveList)

When painter Mira Novak arrives at a hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to recover quickly. Her nurse, Sona, is excited to learn more about the artist who shares her half-Indian identity. Sona is carried away by Mira's travel stories and is shocked by accounts of the painter's many lovers throughout Europe. When Mira dies mysteriously, Sona falls under suspicion.
(Description from NoveList)

A first-century intellectual fights the limitations imposed on women before an encounter with an 18-year-old Jesus leads to their marriage, his dangerous public ministry, and her flight to safety in Alexandria. (Description from NoveList.)

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. (Description from catalog.)

With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her neighbor and screenwriter, Elwood, but his agoraphobia only allows for conversations through the windows. He's the closest thing she has to a friend, as she and her maid, Eva, rarely make conversation. Until they both spot Elwood's sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his rose garden.
(Description from NoveList)

A dark fairy tale inspired by folklore is set against the Jazz age in Mexico's underworld, where a young dreamer is sent by the Mayan God of Death on a life-changing journey. (Description from NoveList.)

In the early hours of the morning after Valentine's Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramirez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead's ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field--an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, one of the town's women decides to take matters into her own hands, setting the stage for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences. - description from Novelist

Ebby Freeman's life unravels when her brother is killed and a centuries-old family heirloom is shattered but years later, while fleeing a public breakup, she uncovers how that lost, shattered jar may hold secrets to her future.
(Description from NoveList)

"The Girl in Dior is Clara, a freshly hired chronicler, fan of fashion and our guide in the busy corridors of the brand new house of Christian Dior. It's February 12, 1947 and the crème de la crème of Paris Haute Couture is flocking to the momentous event of Dior's first show. In a flurry of corolla shaped skirts, the parade of models file down the runway. The audience is mesmerized: it's a triumph! Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar cries out: "It's quite a revolution, your dresses have such a new look!" Dior's career is launched and Clara's story begins. Soon, she is picked by Dior himself to be his model" -- provided by publisher.