Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
(Description from catalog)

Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's periphery, he was in the trenches and tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war.
(Description from catalog)

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.
(Description from Amazon)

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)

When their mother falls ill, the March sisters—reliable Meg, independent Jo, stylish Amy and shy Beth, return home to North Carolina for the holidays where they’ll rediscover what really matters. (Description from NoveList.)

A pair of travelers, one of whom may be playing a dangerous psychological game with the other, embark on a steamy summertime affair that is thrown into chaos by dark secrets and a suspicious death, in a story inspired by the classics of James M. Cain. (Description from NoveList)

Elphaba, born with emerald green skin, comes of age in the land of Oz, rooming with debutante Glinda at the university, and following a path in life that earns her the label of Wicked. (Description from catalog)

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother. But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.
(Description from Amazon)

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)

In this modern-retelling of Cinderella, plus-size Cindy dreams of becoming a shoe designer. But when a spot opens up on her stepmother's famous reality dating TV competition, Cindy is thrust into the spotlight in ways she never thought possible.
(Description from catalog)

Two sisters roll up their sleeves to run a dilapidated beach-town inn but must learn to work with the current tenants in this deliciously spicy reimagining of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility by Nikki Payne. (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)