Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn't talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison's incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, why?
(Description from catalog)

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation. The house owners arrive in the middle of the night in a panic. They say a sudden blackout has swept the city. Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?
(Description from catalog)

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and hasn’t woken up since. Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.” Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and his methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O" case. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.
(Description from NoveList)

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block -- her neighbor Theo.
(Description from catalog)

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored. We look like a normal couple. We're your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with. We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
(Description from catalog)

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she's even better at getting away with murder. Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she's avoided drawing attention to herself - but as she's preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus.
(Description from catalog)

Returning to her hometown after a long absence to investigate the murders of two girls, reporter Camille Preaker is reunited with her neurotic mother and enigmatic half-sister as she works to uncover the truth about the killings. (Description from NoveList)

Stephanie and Jasmine have nothing and everything in common. The two women don't know each other but are on the same plane. Stephanie is on a business trip and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive relationship. After a few days, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man-the messages becoming stranger and more erratic. And then the two women vanish. The texts go silent, the red flags go up, and the panic sets in.
(Description from catalog)

Rachel Krall, the true crime podcaster star of Megan Goldin's acclaimed Night Swim returns to search for a popular social media influencer who disappeared after visiting a suspected serial killer. Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his freedom approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following.
(Description from catalog)

Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland. They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last chance for their middle brother, Cameron.
(Description from catalog)

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. When a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust, the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there's a lot more at stake than just her career.
(Description from catalog)

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates--a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester.
(Description from catalog)

Dr. Richmond Dougherty is a renowned pediatric surgeon, an infamous tragedy survivor, and a national hero. He’s also very dead—thanks to a fall down the stairs. His neighbors angrily point a finger at the newest Ms. Dougherty, Addison. The sudden marriage to the mysterious young woman only lasted ninety-seven days, and he’d had two suspicious “accidents” during that time. Now Addison is a very rich widow.
(Description from Amazon)

A therapist becomes dangerously obsessed with uncovering the truth about what prompted his client, an artist who refuses to speak, to violently murder her husband in a way that triggers mass public speculation. (Description from NoveList.)

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.
(Description from catalog)

When her mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly, Annie Shaw finds her OCD coming back with a vengeance, and when the investigation zeroes in on her, her mind increasingly fractures and the only thing she knows is this: she will do anything to protect her daughter even if it means losing herself. (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.)

A captivating psychological suspense debut about a young woman still haunted by her teenage best friend's death who learns of an eerily similar death and must find her way back to a cabin in the New England woods, armed only with hazy memories, to finally find out the truth that has eluded her.
(Description from catalog)

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.)

When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss--a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten--by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare--one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
(Description from catalog)

For the first 18 years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with her. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar...After serving five years in prison, Patty begs her daughter to take her in. Everyone is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home. (Description from publisher.)

Moving their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California, hope to find a community of like-minded people, Jasmyn, perplexed and frustrated by most residents' outlook, discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders and must save her loved ones from embracing the Liberty way of life.--Description by NoveList