Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

Breaking the promise he made to his beautiful wife, to never pry into her past, when they arrive at her childhood home, a crumbling manor shrouded in mystery, a scholar of myths must choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage--or their lives.
(Description from catalog)

To Kaley Arens, a PhD student in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment. It’s only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend Jobi on a visit to his island home that she realizes how much she still has to learn.
(Description from NoveList)

Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and placed in an alcove in the Great Library of Alyssium. This should have been the end of her story...
(Description from NoveList)

In the early 1900s, a curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town to study faerie folklore, where she discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on dryadology, the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--much less get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers.
(Description from catalog)

Princess Calla Tuoleimi plans to take down her family's monarchy but must decide between her kingdom or her new lover in an adult fantasy epic from the author of the YA Secret Shanghai novels. (Description from NoveList)

The fates of two bitter enemies with opposing magical abilities are swept together. (Description from NoveList)

Thrown into a desolate land of sickness and unnatural beasts, Kai wakes in the woods with no idea who she is or how she got there. All she knows is that if she cannot reach the Sea of Devour, even this hellscape will get worse. But when she sees the village blacksmith fight invaders with unspeakable skill, she decides to accept his offer of help. As she searches for answers, Kai only finds more questions, especially regarding the blacksmith who can ignite her body like a flame, then douse it with ice in the next breath.
(Description from NoveList)

Bound to servitude in the Fae realm, the fierce young human Kenna Heron must aid her mistress in completing six deadly trials, only to find herself embroiled in a plot against the sadistic faerie king, and drawn to the rebellion's charismatic leader.
(Description from NoveList)

After discovering that she is a shield maiden who can repel any attack, a fanatical jarl binds Freya with a blood oath to protect Skaland. (Description from catalog)

Fates collide and passions ignite in New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer’s steamy adult fantasy debut about three characters torn between chasing, betraying, and craving each other: a princess caught between duty and desire, the fearsome warrior king she’s promised to, and the assassin tasked with hunting them down.
(Description from NoveList)

Loyalties are tested when a healer and an assassin from enemy sides are forced to work together and find the source of two deadly diseases, all while resisting the urge to kill each other-and, just maybe, fall in love.
(Description from NoveList)

A powerful plant witch and a grumpy alchemist must work together in order to save their quiet little town in this debut cozy fantasy.
(Description from NoveList)

Every year on St. Walpurga's Eve, Caldella's Witch Queen lures a boy back to her palace. An innocent life to be sacrificed on the full moon to keep the island city from sinking. Lina Kirk is convinced her brother is going to be taken this year. To save him, she enlists the help of the mysterious Thomas Lin, the boy she secretly loves, and the only person to ever escape from the palace. Working together they save her brother, but they draw the queen's attention, and Thomas is then chosen as the sacrifice.
(Description from catalog)

Half-Fae, half-human Bryce Quinlan loves her life. By day, she works for an antiquities dealer, selling barely legal magical artifacts, and by night, she parties with her friends, savoring every pleasure Lunathion-otherwise known as Crescent City-has to offer. But it all comes crumbling down when a ruthless murder shakes the very foundations of the city-and Bryce's world.
(Description from catalog)

Fleeing a stifling future, wealthy heir Yael Clauneck seeks adventure and finds unexpected refuge with childhood friend Margot Greenwillow, a struggling plant witch, as their rekindled bond blooms into love that is threatened by meddling families.
(Description from NoveList)

Sadie Revelare has always believed that the curse of four heartbreaks that accompanies her magic would be worth the price. But when her grandmother is diagnosed with cancer with only weeks to live, and her first heartbreak, Jake McNealy, returns to town after a decade, her carefully structured life begins to unravel.
(Description from catalog)

A demon. An angel. A city. The demon Vitrine - immortal, powerful, and capricious - loves the dazzlingcity of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost - and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy.
(Description from catalog)

A vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love in this epic and seductive gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.
(Description from catalog)

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.--Description by NoveList