Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

In a village in northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.
(Description from catalog)

The shattering disappearance of two young girls from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula compounds the isolation and fears of a tight-woven community, connecting the lives of neighbors, witnesses, family members and a detective throughout an ensuing year of tension. (Description from NoveList)

When his lover fails to return from a deep-cover assignment, Moscow investigator Arkady Renko embarks on a dangerous journey involving the rise of a political dissident who threatens Putin’s rule. (Description from NoveList)

Paints a portrait of the generation of Chinese born after 1990, describing how they feel about money, sex, their government, the West, and China’s changing role in the world as well as their passion for food, karaoke and travel. (Description from NoveList)

After her school age sister commits suicide, Siu-Man refuses to believe there was no foul play and contacts a hacker known as N. to help her in this new novel from the internationally acclaimed author of The Borrowed. (Description from NoveList.)

New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume reveals how a courageous reporter uncovered one of greatest and deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century-the true effects of the atom bomb-potentially saving millions of lives. (Description from catalog.)

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo-the city that would become Tokyo-and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. (Description from catalog.)

On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party, but the occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. (Description from Amazon.)

The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff overlooking icy seas at the remote northern tip of Japan. When a man is found dead in one of the mansion's rooms, murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances, the police are called. But they are unable to solve the puzzle, and powerless to protect the party of house guests as more bizarre deaths follow. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renowned sleuth, famous for unmasking the culprit behind the notorious Umezawa family massacre. But you have all the clues too - can you solve the mystery of the murders in The Crooked House first? (Description from catalog)

Analyzes the perilous world of the international fossil trade through the story of one man's devastating effort to sell a Gobi Desert dinosaur skeleton from a nation that forbids natural-history trafficking.
(Description from NoveList)

For fans of Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, this is the extraordinary debut memoir of a young woman who traveled to Mongolia to compete in the world’s longest, toughest horse race, and emerged as its youngest and first-ever female winner. (Description from NoveList)

A history of the ruling women of the Mongol Empire, this work reveals their struggle to preserve a nation that shaped the world. (Description from catalog)

Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today. (Description from NoveList)

In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city in the Kim Jong Un Era. (Description from catalog)

A talented young deep-sea diver from occupied 1948 Korea's neighboring Jeju Island visits Mt. Halla for her family's annual trading trip before her romance with a mountain youth is upended by family tragedy and political turbulence. (Description from catalog)

Deciding to go vegetarian in the wake of violent thoughts, Yeong-hye, a woman from an Asian culture of strict societal mores, is denounced as a subversive as she spirals into extreme rebelliousness that causes her to splinter from her true nature and risk her life. (Description from NoveList)

The riveting story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart.
(Description from catalog)

Transforming into a manifestation of a tiger character from her Taiwanese heritage, Daughter falls in love with an equally remarkable girl while translating mysterious letters from female relatives who embody mythical archetypes. (Description from NoveList)

In a near-future Tokyo transformed by a population crisis and AI-enhanced medicine, a Filipina nurse worries she will lose her job to an eerily perceptive robot that draws out the secrets of their moody centenarian employer. - description from Novelist

Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.
(Description from NoveList)

An award-winning journalist investigates the mysterious 2014 deaths of two teenage girls in a tiny Indian village and how it led to a national conversation about sex, violence and codes of honor. (Description from NoveList)

A 9-year-old reality-television enthusiast in India uses crime-show approaches to investigate the disappearance of a classmate, before additional abductions shatter life in his sprawling city home. (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.)

The author describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, a disastrous expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived. (Description from NoveList)

A heart-rending narrative that moves from the Himalayas to the Middle East to Houston and culminates in an epic court battle, this is a story of death and life - of the war in Iraq, the killings of the twelve Nepalese, a journalist determined to uncover the truth, and a trio of human rights lawyers dedicated to finding justice. At its heart is one unforgettable young woman, Kamala Magar, who found the courage to face the influential men who sent her husband to his death - a model of strength hope, bravery, and an unbreakable spirit who reminds us of the power we all have to make a difference. (Description from catalog)

A journalist, in this skillfully reported and cleverly told account, reconstructs the life of a Pakistani media star who, in 2016, was murdered in a suspected honor killing, exposing a culture divided between accelerating modernity and imposed traditional values. (Description from NoveList.)

The founder of the Sughar nonprofit presents a memoir describing how her father's nontraditional beliefs about education saved her from an arranged marriage and how she was inspired to create a foundation focused on empowering women in rural communities. (Description from NoveList)

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. (Description from catalog)

In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry--until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won't make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and start having children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire them to dream of more.
(Description from catalog)

A journalist draws on his immersive visits to the remote Indonesian island of the Lamalerans, the world's last subsistence whalers, to profile their way of life and illuminate how their indigenous culture is succumbing to the modern world. (Description from catalog)

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. (Description from catalog.)

The story of US Navy nurse Dorothy Still and her colleagues at a military hospital in the Philippines, who cared for their fellow prisoners of war while being held captive by the Japanese during World War II. (Description from catalog)

While on a road trip in Duterte’s Philippines, two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, both collaborate and clash in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American war. (Description from NoveList)

Envisioning a summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl. (Description from catalog)

In this raw, searing new narrative account, Howard Jones reopens the case of My Lai by examining individual accounts of both victims and soldiers through extensive archival and original research. Jones evokes the horror of the event itself, the attempt to suppress it, as well as the response to Calley's sentence and the seemingly unanswerable question of whether he had merely been following orders. (Description from catalog)

Tr̀ân Dịêu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Ṇôi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ĥò Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart. (Description from catalog.)

Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles. (Description from catalog.)

A first novel by the award-winning author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds is written in the form of a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read about the impact of the Vietnam War on their family. (Description from NoveList.)