Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Outliving the expectations of her Cystic Fibrosis diagnosis, Nicola Laughton marries Anton, but after his death in a car crash goes viral as a supernatural event, a group of spiritualists offering closure hold a séance that unleashes a terrifying force.
(Description from NoveList)

Invited to join a popular clique at her university, a misfit artist with a dark imagination is drawn into ritualistic activities that transform her perspectives on reality. (Description from NoveList)

Evil has a one track mind... A woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed.
(Description from NoveList)

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)

Slasher meets satire, in this darkly comic novel set in Nigeria about a woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
(Description from catalog)

A modern retelling of the Bigfoot legend is presented as a gripping journal by a woman from a high-tech Pacific Northwest community who becomes cut off from civilization by a volcanic eruption before witnessing the flight of starving humanoid beings.

When Noah Fairchild returns to his childhood home in Richmond to find his parents in a horrifying trance induced by far-right media, he and his young nephew Marcus must flee through a country overtaken by possessed, violent families tearing each other apart.
(Description from NoveList)

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman--and he's playing games with them.
(Description from catalog)

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip. This year, something is waiting in the darkness. Something wicked ... An intruder stumbles upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine ... (Description from catalog)

A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nick name--Buffalo Bill--is stalking particular women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the bureau's behavioral science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and grisly killer now kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter's insight into the minds of murderers could help track and capture Buffalo Bill. (Description from catalog)

Set in Florida in the 1970s, Grady Hendrix's newest novel follows five young women in a home for unwed mothers who find a guide to witchcraft.
(Description from catalog)

Leslie is assigned to the backwoods town of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling, ready to spill over, and Leslie will have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand. (Description from NoveList)

Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call. Mavis, Alison's estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. But Alison grew up with her mother's alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories. Still, she eventually agrees to take in Mavis, hoping that she and her mother could finally heal and have the relationship she's always dreamed of. But when mysterious and otherworldly things start happening upon Mavis's arrival, Alison begins to suspect her mother is not quite who she seems.
(Description from catalog)

Mourning the death of his wife, a father and his young son move to Featherbank for a fresh start but find their new town has a dark past involving a serial killer named "The Whisper Man." (Description from NoveList.)

An unusual figurine and the Amazon Basin archaeologists who found the relic are at the heart of a mystery surrounding a series of brutal killings at New York's Museum of Natural History. (Description from NoveList)

Emerging as the lone survivor of a serial killer's massacre a decade earlier, Quincy Carpenter struggles to ignore traumatic memories and move on as one of a group of other survivors who look to her for answers when one of them is found dead in a suspicious suicide. (Description from catalog.)

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick. The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot. The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member.--Description by NoveList

An only survivor of her family's massacre, Dixie impulsively moves into her early childhood home, where she begins to question her sanity and the haunted shadows of the past that threaten her future. (Description from NoveList.)

Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
(Description from catalog)

Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent their lives searching for the happiness they felt while they were on it. The friendship. The feeling of belonging. And the protection of Mister Magic.
(Description from Amazon)

In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a rundown house. But soon, they realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave, and it's making its presence felt. Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide, the terrifying truth is uncovered. (Description from catalog)

"As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make sci-fi films in their yards, convincing their friends to star as victims of grisly murders, smearing lipstick on the 'bodies' to simulate blood. Now a talented artist and aspiring filmmaker, Brian, along with Jimmy, Jimmy's friend Tina, and Laurie--his reluctant muse--sets off to a remote cabin in the woods with an old 16 millimeter camera to make a true sci-fi horror movie, an homage to Brian's favorite movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian's affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams, his damsel in distress, and his savior wrapped into one. Rife with references to classic sci-fi and horror movies and filled with panels of stunning depictions of nature, film and the surreal, Burns blurs the line between Brian's dreams and reality, imagination and perception." (provided by publisher)

"When college freshman Kat Fields receives a mysterious email urging her to visit a relatively unknown Texas town with a history of witchcraft, strange sightings, and "devil lights"--glowing red stars that appear above the town's hills every night--she ditches her plans for spring break and takes a solo road trip to Estrella Roja to investigate for her podcast, Paranormal Texas, catchphrase: "Y'all stay spooky!" Meanwhile, Marisol "Mari" Castillo, is also headed for Estrella Roja to attend the funeral for her abuela whom she hasn't seen since childhood, when her mom cut ties with the family and left town. Feeling lost and bored, she decides to help Kat after a chance meeting at the local diner--and, okay, it doesn't hurt that Kat is super cute. As the two girls grow closer not only to each other, but to uncovering the dark legacy that the town was built on, they discover that something hungry lurks beneath the strange stars and that in the hills of Estrella Roja, some secrets should stay buried"-- Provided by publisher.