Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

In 1891 Montana, Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker, and Polly Gillspie, the new bride of an extremely devout mine captain, falling madly in love, strike out west on a stolen horse, but with a posse of deranged gunmen in hot pursuit, the choices they make will haunt them forever.
(Description from NoveList)

In the Spring of 1877, Bridget is orphaned while crossing the Kansas prairie. She arrives penniless in Dodge City, and is soon recruited to work at the Buffalo Queen, the only brothel in town run by women. Bridget takes to brothel life instantly, appreciating the good food, good pay, and good friendships she forms with her fellow "sporting women," even catching the eye of the town's Sheriff's Deputy, who offers the Queen protection and security. Then, Spartan Lee--the most legendary (and only) female gunfighter in the region--rides into town, and Bridget falls in love.
(Description from catalog)

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming, but within a year's time she's fallen in love-both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy in the flat, brown corner of the state where winter blizzards are unforgiving and the summer heat relentless. But Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success, and each deeply felt tragedy.
(Description from catalog)

Carrie Ballentyne's life was upended in 1845 when she had to leave the only home she'd ever known in the mountains of upstate New York. With her are her widowed mother and younger brother Nathan, but the separation from Bonner, Ballentyne, and Savard relatives weighs heavily. In time Carrie finds footing as a midwife and nurse, but she never feels at ease in the city. So when, a decade later, she receives an invitation from a doctor in Santa Fe to join him at his practice, she readily accepts.
(Description from catalog)

When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family. (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)

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)

A supernatural reimagining of the Donner Party story follows a group of wagon-train pioneers who navigate sanity-testing misfortunes, including the mysterious death of a little boy and a series of disappearances that cause a beautiful member of the group to be accused of witchcraft. (Description from NoveList.)

Betty Rhyzyk, Brooklyn's toughest female police detective, relocates to rough-and-tumble Dallas, Texas, where she must contend with a group of unruly subordinates, a persistent stalker, a formidable criminal organization, and an unsupportive girlfriend. (Description from catalog.)

In the first book of this brilliant series, now expanded and revised by the author, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues the man in black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York called Jake. (Description from catalog)

In a rural East Texas town of fewer than 200 people, the body of an African American lawyer from Chicago is found in a bayou, followed several days later by that of a local white woman. What's going on? African American Texas Ranger Darren Mathews hopes to find out, which means talking to relatives of the deceased, including the woman's white supremacist husband -- and Mathews soon discovers things are more complex than they seem. (Description from NoveList)