Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Dominic Salt and his three children are the last caretakers of Shearwater, an island near Antarctica, home to the world's largest seed bank. As they endure rising sea levels and isolation, a mysterious woman, Rowan, washes ashore during a severe storm. Nursing Rowan back to health, the Salts find hope, but secrets surface.
(Description from NoveList)

Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother fled an abusive husband to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
(Description from NoveList)

Eve Ambroise may be a rising star playwright, but her personal life is falling part. But keeping up the lie that she's just on a writing retreat becomes near impossible. Coming off a contentious custody battle, Jamie Gallagher is restructuring what his life looks like as a single dad, and spending more days at his cabin makes his new "free time" a little less empty. Especially when he meets the beautiful-and prickly-woman next door. The last thing he needs is a new romance to shake up his family dynamics even more, but there's something about Eve.
(Description from catalog)

Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill, but the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.
(Description from NoveList)

A hidden and nearly forgotten magic--of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life--holds the power to transform a young woman's relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
(Description from NoveList)

Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson are on Little Crescent Island to write the biography of the octogenarian who claims to be Margaret Ives - heiress, tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most scandalous families of the 20th century. Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose who’ll tell her story.
(Description from NoveList)

Anna’s dream of London’s elegance collides with harsh realities until the glamorous Wilders sweep her into their world of wealth, temptation and self-discovery, where she’s torn between her ambition, her identity and the allure of belonging.
(Description from NoveList)

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago.
(Description from NoveList)

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian--an enigmatic and volatile man--spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian's servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she'd never before needed. Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

Cate Kay, a reclusive bestselling author, has concealed her identity for years, but when a devastating tragedy from her past resurfaces, she's forced to confront the secrets that derailed her dreams and return to the place she's been running from.

After a career-halting accident, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg to confront her past and to decide whether to rejoin the stage amidst the cutthroat world of Russian ballet.--Description by NoveList

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest—one of the last to be contacted by missionaries in the 1950s—Nemonte Nenquimo had a singular upbringing. She was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders, and she has since emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism. In We Will Be Jaguars, she partners with her husband, Mitch Anderson, founder of Amazon Frontlines, digging into generations of oral history, uprooting centuries of conquest, and hacking away at racist notions of indigenous peoples.--Description from NoveList