Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Author Jessica Bruder, who teaches at the Columbia School of Journalism, spent several years traveling with older Americans who have become itinerant workers in order to make ends meet. In Nomadland, she describes how they assume a "wheel estate" (instead of "real estate") existence as they travel from one seasonal job to the next, exchanging information on safe camping sites and enjoying the camaraderie of the road. (Description from NoveList)

The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice. (Description from catalog)

Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. (Description from NoveList)

Inseparable best friends Kate and Tully, two young women who, despite their very different lives, have vowed to be there for each other forever, have been true to their promise for thirty years, until events and choices in their lives tear them apart. (Description from NoveList)

A live news reader traveling the Antebellum South is offered $50 to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, back to her family in San Antonio. (Description from NoveList)

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their home town. It was the children who saw--and felt--what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing.... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. Until the grown-up chldren were called back, once more to confront It as It stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

Envisioning a summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl. (Description from catalog)

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
(Description from catalog)

Only two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. David and Adele seem like the ideal pair. He's a successful psychiatrist, she is his picture-perfect wife who adores him. But why is he so controlling? And why is she keeping things hidden? As Louise, David's new secretary, is drawn into their orbit, she uncovers more puzzling questions than answers. The only thing that is crystal clear is that something in this marriage is very, very wrong. But Louise can't guess how wrong--and how far a person might go to protect their marriage's secrets.
(Description from catalog)

The unconventional secret childhood bond between a popular boy and a lonely, intensely private girl is tested by character reversals in their first year at a Dublin college that render one introspective and the other social, but self-destructive. (Description from NoveList.)

When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her. (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)

An astonishingly incisive and suspenseful novel about a scandal amongst Britain's privileged elite and the women caught up in its wake. (Description from catalog)