Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

The Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware, née Greenfield, has just presented her younger daughter to the ton, and the rest of her life belongs only to herself. She returns to Ravenswood, intending to spend the summer alone there. But the summer has other plans for her.
(Description from catalog)

Hiding a dark past, Robert Rothmere, to keep his riches, must foil the schemes of his enemies by convincing Lady Constance Wentworth, a woman with whom he crossed paths years ago, to marry him. (Description from catalog)

Abandoned by his father, Gareth Inglis grew up lonely, prickly, and well-used to disappointment. Still,he longs for a connection. When he meets a charming man in a London molly house, he falls head over heels--until everything goes wrong and he's left alone again. Then Gareth's father dies, turning the shabby London clerk into Sir Gareth, with a grand house on the remote Romney Marsh and a family he doesn't know.
(Description from catalog)

A marriage of convenience between a Mexican heiress and a shrewd London politician makes for a scandalous Victorian bargain--and a love that will eclipse the burdens of ambition and duty. Ana Maraia Luna Valdaes has strived to be the perfect daughter, the perfect niece, and the perfect representative of the powerful Luna familia. So, when Ana Maraia is secretly sent to London with her sisters to seek refuge during the French occupation of Mexico, she experiences her first taste of freedom far from the judgmental eyes of her domineering father.
(Description from catalog)

Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded London's first social club for ladies to provide sanctuary for England's most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a clandestine mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.
(Description from catalog)

Thomas Sharpe is handsome, well-bred, and desperately in need of a wealthy bride. His father has lost their income, his sister needs looking after, and so to save them all from a life of poverty he travels to London in search of an heiress. Enter Lady Jane Capel. After her fiancé left two years ago, Jane moved in with her half-brother Percy. Thomas and Jane strike a deal: Thomas will show her all there is to know about the world and Jane will help him find a bride. But the more time they spend together and the closer they get, the two of them soon realize that things aren’t so simple when it comes to men and women.
(Description from Amazon)

When shy Miss Eliza Balfour married the austere Earl of Somerset, twenty years her senior, it was the match of the season--no matter that he was not the husband Eliza wanted. Now, ten years later, Eliza is widowed. Suddenly, she is left titled, rich, and, for the first time in her life, utterly in control of her own future. She's always lived by society's conventions, but now, Eliza has resolved to do as she wants.
(Description from catalog)

Two eccentric orphans bring together a grumpy viscount and the free-spirited heroine who steals his heart in the first novel in Eloisa James’s new Accidental Brides series, in which haughty aristocrats find themselves married to the wrong women.
(Description from Amazon)

Falling under the protection of Joshua Wolf when her life and reputation are threatened by a scoundrel from her past, Lady Gwyn Drake must decide whether to risk her heart for this man who seems to be unmoved by her attempts at flirtation. (Description from NoveList.)

When Lord Dominic Kirke meets Catherine Keating, a blue-eyed country girl with a cracking wit, he offers to help her find a husband during the London season, but soon realizes he wants her for himself, but loving her means setting her free for the life-and the man-she deserves.

Lady Henrietta pursues one last night of passion before starting her life as a spinster, finding herself in the arms a king known as Beast in the second novel of the series following Wicked and the Wallflower. (Description from NoveList.)

When a duke discovers the woman he loves was tricked into marrying another, the master chess player makes the now-widowed Viscountess the highest-stakes wager of his life in a last-ditch effort to win her affection: he will find husbands for her two sisters—or depart forever.
(Description from NoveList)

Ordered by the team's owner to give a bunch of interviews to reporter Mark Bailey, baseball shortstop, Eddie O'Leary, during the 1960 season, slowly gives in to the attraction between them, and when it's just them against the world, they must decide if that's enough.
(Description from catalog)