Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds.
(Description from catalog)

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.
(Description from catalog)

It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
(Description from catalog)

Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments.
(Description from NoveList)

Tom, an architect and gay man who is finally ready to put himself first, is trying to keep his needy family at bay, yet finds himself answering their demands when his sister and niece need his help, setting him on a journey that changes everyone's life and demonstrates the beauty and dysfunction of the ties that bind families together.
(Description from NoveList)

It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.
(Description from NoveList)

Joan Goodwin, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, dreams of going to space after seeing an ad for NASA’s space shuttle program. Selected in 1980, she trains at Johnson Space Center with fellow candidates. As they prepare for their first flights, Joan finds new passion and love, questioning her place in the universe.
(Description from NoveList)

From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.
(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)

A young boy growing up in a rundown 1980s Glasgow public housing facility pursues some semblance of a normal life as his older siblings move on and his mother increasingly succumbs to alcoholism. (Description from NoveList)

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. (Description from NoveList)

Rotem is a Sunhead, a fan of the international smash hit Sunrise series of books and films. She’s obsessed with the story’s love interest, Edmund, and no one else gets it. But all that changes when she befriends Ayala, a shy classmate and avid book lover who’s as swept away by the romance as she is. The two become fast friends, but as their deep connection grows stronger, Rotem starts to wonder: What exactly draws her to this story? (Description from NoveList)

Esme, a barista, feels invisible, like a ghost . . . also, when Esme drinks too much coffee, she actually sees ghosts. Yara, the elegant heir to a coffee plantation, is always seen, but only has eyes for Esme. Their world is turned upside down when the strange ghost of an old-world nobleman begs Esme to take his letter from New York City to a haunted coffee farm in Brazil to reunite him with his lost love of a century ago, bringing sinister tidings of unrequited love. (Description from catalog)

Bron and Ray are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties to Ray's niece, six-year-old Nessie. Their playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and ease in all three of their lives, which ping-pong between familial tensions and deep-seeded personal stumbling blocks. As their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron isolate from each other and attempt to repair their broken family ties. (Description from catalog)

Now that college is over, English graduate Ben Cook is on the job hunt looking for something...anything...related to his passion for reading and writing. But interview after interview, hiring committee after hiring committee, Ben soon learns getting the dream job won't be as easy as he thought. Proofreading? Journalism? Copywriting? Not enough experience. It turns out he doesn't even have enough experience to be a garbage collector! But when Ben stumbles upon a Now Hiring--No Experience Necessary sign outside a restaurant, he jumps at the chance to land his first job. (Description from catalog)

Eschewing female stereotypes throughout her early years and failing to gain acceptance on the boys' baseball team, Liz learns to embrace her own views on gender as she comes of age, in an anecdotal graphic novel memoir. (description from catalog)

Sensual, sweet, and beautifully illustrated, Patience & Esther is a steamy period romance and an inspirational erotic journey across the epic sweep of history, from the end of a gilded age to the start of an uncharted future. (Description from NoveList)

"The last thing Phoebe Zito wants is to be noticed. The newest kid at Sally Ride High School, newly arrived in Los Angeles, and newly transitioned, she's just trying to blend in while she figures out exactly who she is. But with her mom checked out, her dad still adjusting to having a daughter, and no guidebook on how to be a girl, that isn't going to be easy. Enter Mackenize Ishikawa. She's the girl all girls want to be and all boys want to be with--and, Mackenzie has decided, Phoebe's new best friend. Mackenzie knows what it takes to survive and thrive as a girl in high school, most of all that no matter who Phoebe wants to be, or who she wants to date, she's going to need someone having her back. Phoebe soon realizes what Mackenzie knows too well: Being true to yourself is going to mean breaking some hearts. But as Phoebe discovers what kind of girl she is--and what kind of girl everyone around her thinks she's supposed to be--she worries one of those hearts will be her own" (provided by publisher)

"Ariel has dreams of leaving her southside Chicago neighborhood and making it big as a punk rocker with her best friends and bandmates, now that they've graduated from high school, but the realities of young adulthood make that challenging and strain their friendships with each other."--Provided by publisher.