Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience: Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art . . . an ingenious way to live." (Description from catalog.)

The Iraq War veteran traces her impoverished childhood, her decision to join the Army, the months spent recovering from the RPG attack that shot down her helicopter and nearly took her life, and her subsequent mission of serving in elected office. (Description from catalog)

The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage. (Description from catalog.)

A moving exploration of the crisis of homeless youth--told through the inspiring stories of a woman on the frontlines and the kids themselves.
(Description from NoveList)

Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life.
(Description from catalog)

Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn't understand. She suspected it was because she didn't feel things the way other kids did. She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something. In college, Patric finally confirmed what she'd long suspected. She was a sociopath.
(Description from catalog)

The creator of the YouTube channel How to ADHD shares the insights and strategies that help her thrive in this accessible and shame-free guide to working with, understanding, and celebrating the ADHD brain.
(Description from catalog)

The author shares her journey as a sufferer of undiagnosed health problems as she, finally diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease, learns to accept the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. (Description from NoveList.)

Grammy-nominated musician Allison Moorer's lyrical memoir, a testament to love and resilience through the lens of parenting her young son, John Henry, who has nonverbal autism.
(Description from catalog)

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases--a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
(Description from catalog)

A dramatic murder trial in the aftermath of an experimental medical treatment and a fatal explosion upends a rural Virginia community where personal secrets and private ambitions complicate efforts to uncover what happened. (Description from NoveList.)

Jamie and Bea have nothing in common except a meet-disaster and the mutual understanding that they couldn't be more wrong for each other. But when the people closest to them play Cupid and trick them into dating, Jamie and Bea realize they have something else in common after all-an undeniable need for revenge. Soon their plan is in place: 1. Fake date. Obnoxiously. Convince the meddlers they're madly in love. 2. Break up. Spectacularly. Dash everyone's hopes and put a stop to the matchmaking madness - once and for all.
(Description from catalog)

For Glory Hopkins, inheriting her aunt Lucille's Harlem brownstone feels more like a curse than a blessing. As a restless artist struggling to find gallery representation, Glory doesn't have the money, time, or patience tolook after the aging house of an aunt she barely knew. But when she stumbles into Parkie de Groot, a savvy, ambitious auction house appraiser on the verge of a coveted promotion, her unexpected inheritance begins to look more promising.
(Description from catalog)

This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both at the same time. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another--and changed forever.
(Description from catalog)

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
(Description from catalog)

On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party, but the occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. (Description from Amazon.)

1938. Lena Papadopoulos has never quite found her place within the circus. The daughter of headlining illusionist Theo, Lena uses a wheelchair after a childhood bout of polio. She rescues Alexandre, an orphan with his own secrets and mysterious past. As World War II escalates, the boy trains as the illusionist's apprentice. When Theo and Alexandre are arrested and made to perform in Theresienstadt, a town for Jews set up by the Nazis, Lena must confront her doubts and dare to believe in the impossible: herself.
(Description from catalog)

They refer to themselves as “las Madres,” a close-knit group of women who have created a family based on friendship and blood ties. Their story begins in Puerto Rico in 1975 when fifteen-year-old Luz, the tallest girl in her dance academy and the only Black one in a sea of petite, light-skinned, delicate swans, is seriously injured in a car accident. Tragically, her brilliant, multilingual scientist parents are both killed in the crash. Now orphaned, Luz navigates the pressures of adolescence and copes with the aftershock of a brain injury, when two new friends enter her life. Luz’s days are consumed with aches and pains, and her memory of the accident is wiped clean, but she suffers spells that send her mind to times and places she can’t share with others.
(Description from Amazon)

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.
(Description from Amazon)

Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life. (Description from catalog.)