Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth.
(Description from catalog)

Follows the release of a best-selling book about an early 20th-century New England boarding school where gender-diverse students died under suspicious circumstances. (Description from NoveList)

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. (Description from catalog)

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe. After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, they must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.
(Description from Amazon)

A private investigator and talented liar embarks on a search for a killer at a California private academy for mages where her estranged, magically gifted twin hides in plain sight. (Description from NoveList.)

Takes readers into the dark underbelly of New York City where a roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars. (Description from NoveList.)

As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, Linus Baker spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they're likely to bring about the end of days. But the children aren't the only secret the island keeps. (Description from catalog.)

Children have always disappeared from Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children under the right conditions. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy's arrival marks a change at the Home. There's a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it's up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter. No matter the cost. (Description from catalog.)

Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War. (Description from catalog)

Raised in a hostile undead world where she would escape servitude and a zombie afterlife, a lesbian necromancer becomes a bodyguard to an emperor to secure her freedom in a solar system of swordplay and cutthroat politics. Description from NoveList.)

Living in a utopian world shaped by alien invaders who make any dream possible, a 50-year-old trans woman is devastated by the end of her marriage before an unexpected quest pits her against the aliens' most avid supporters. (Description from NoveList.)

The winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind.
(Description from catalog)

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice's life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go. Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.
(Description from catalog)

Vern gives birth to twins and raises them away from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong-not with them, but with her own body. A genre-bending work of Gothic fiction that wrestles with the history of American racism.
(Description from catalog)

A caver who takes a dangerous job to make enough money to escape her hardscrabble planet begins to doubt her handler's motivations. (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)

In this darkly magical retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Alyce, an evil sorceress, finds an ally in Princess Aurora and wonders if she can lift Aurora's curse so that together they can forge a new world.
(Description from catalog)