Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

1957. A young woman is found dead in a mews house wearing only silk underwear and a diamond tiara. An older man is discovered nearby, garroted and pierced through the eye with a long, sharp implement. According to the police, a high society card game was going on downstairs that night. One of the players surely committed the murders, but each of them can give the others an alibi. When someone very close to her is implicated, the young Queen is drawn in to the investigation.
(Description from NoveList)

When private investigator Charlie Parker is hired to find Wyatt Riggins, who vanished after leaving behind a cryptic message, he uncovers a sinister web involving the abduction of four children linked to relentless killers, a cartel boss, and the chilling truth about the enigmatic Children of Eve.
(Description from NoveList)

In 1978, as a valuable Egyptian artifact disappears during the Met Gala, Met curator Charlotte Cross and young assistant Annie Jenkins embark on a high-stakes search that leads them to Egypt, where Charlotte must confront an ancient curse and the haunting tragedy of her past.
(Description from NoveList)

Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her Indiana hometown, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years, since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace. On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, a young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier.
(Description from NoveList)

In 1911 New York City, acclaimed novelist Edith Wharton, when fellow writer David Graham Phillips is murdered, becomes obsessed with solving the crime when his sister believes he was killed by someone determined to stop the publication of his next book, which reveals the secrets of powerful people.
(Description from NoveList)

Colette Marceau has spent her life stealing jewels guided by her mother's code: take from the cruel, give to the needy. During WWII in Paris, her mother Annabel was arrested, and her sister Liliane vanished during a raid, with a diamond bracelet hidden in her nightgown. Annabel was executed, and Liliane's body was found, but the bracelet disappeared. Seventy years later, it resurfaces in a Boston museum, unraveling Colette's attempts to put the past behind her.
(Description from NoveList)

In 1816 London, as riots loom amid economic and environmental crises, Sebastian St. Cyr investigates a nobleman’s ritualistic murder tied to tarot cards, uncovering dark secrets and racing to stop a killer before chaos engulfs the city.
(Description from NoveList)

A dim-witted Proud Boys reject becomes entangled in a bizarre web of corruption and intrigue involving a hitchhiker, a con artist, an eccentric millionaire and a power-hungry politician in the new novel by the best-selling author of Bad Monkey.
(Description from NoveList)

Three middle-aged best friends turn to murder in order to collect on their husbands' life insurance policies...but are unaware that their husbands have a devious plan of their own.
(Description from NoveList)

Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from a California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone and they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide, in part because the coroner's examination revealed Rose had recently had an abortion. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life, nor can she imagine Rose carelessly getting pregnant.
(Description from catalog)

Psychologist Alex Delaware and Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis race against time to find a twisted killer.
(Description from NoveList)

Secretly hired by an eccentric Lady Franklin to lead a team of women explorers into the Arctic to recover Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, Virginia Reeve survives a harrowing quest only to find herself on trial for murder. (Description from NoveList)

Introduces Bombay's first female lawyer, Oxford graduate Perveen Mistry, as she investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in strict purdah seclusion who become subject to a murderous guardian's schemes for their inheritances. (Description from NoveList.)

After months of maternity leave, today Camilla will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note. Then it starts.
(Description from NoveList)

Chicky Diaz, beloved doorman at the Bohemia, prepares for an eventful night as tensions rise across the city. In the penthouse, Emily Longworth grapples with her loathsome yet immensely wealthy husband and an ironclad prenup. In 2A, Julian Sonnenberg reflects on aging and loss after a life-changing call. Meanwhile, unrest brews among the Bohemia's working-class staff amidst citywide violence following a police killing.
(Description from NoveList)

Set in the art world of 1970s London, The English Masterpiece is a fast-paced read to the end, full of glamour and secrets, tensions and lies, as one young woman races against the clock to uncover the truth about a Picasso masterpiece.
(Description from NoveList)

The sudden collapse of a railway tunnel in the East End of London kills dozens and shuts down services all over the city. Meanwhile, a mysterious beggar calling herself “Dutch” guides enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn to an attempt by a powerful aristocrat to take over London's criminal underworld.
(Description from NoveList)

After her twin brother Johnny's tragic death, James returns to their hometown to settle his affairs where she begins to uncover the dark secrets he left behind, some of which may involve his best friend and her ex-lover, Micah.
(Description from NoveList)

"Nancy Drew meets David Lynch in this mystery thriller set in a strange and remote [Canadian] East Coast village. The story follows a gang of teens who have made it their business to investigate every one of their town's bizarre occurrences as The Teen Detective Club (a registered afterschool program). Their small world of missing pets and shed fires is turned upside down when real-life kid adventurer and globetrotter Sam Finch comes to town and enlists them in their first real case -- the search for his missing father. In doing so, they stumble upon a terrifying world of rural secret societies, weird-but-true folk mythology, subterranean lairs, and an occultist who can turn men into dogs ..."-- Provided by publisher

"Two high school students are found dead, stoking fears amongst the student body and surrounding community of a serial killer on the loose. Yet summer is approaching, and the future is fraught with uncertainty--if only things could go back to normal for just a while longer. Instead, the heightened police presence prevents Pola from dealing at school while her best friend, the typically discreet Daniel, resists increasingly morbid impulses. News crews speculate about the Bloody Batter, triggering PTSD and fueling paranoia. Meanwhile, evil has its own plans." (description from publisher)