Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A taut, lyrical portrait of four people thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina. (Description from NoveList.)

Navigating the underground gay scene of 1962 Greenwich Village, quick-witted Vera Kelly is recruited for the CIA and infiltrates a group of student activists in Buenos Aires before a coup leaves her stranded in hostile territory. (Description from NoveList)

A visionary new novel races from the world of 19th-century science to an ultra-surveilled near future, exploring humanity’s quest for knowledge and control, and leaping forward to the next steps in human evolution. - description from Novelist

Interweaves the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who vanished during a 1925 expedition into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, with the author's own adventure-filled quest into the uncharted wilderness to uncover the mysteries surrounding Fawcett's final journey and the secrets of what really lies deep in the Amazon jungle.
(Description from NoveList)

The true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing 1914 exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth, a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. (Description from catalog)

This never-before-told story of the auto magnate's attempt to recreate small-town America, along with a rubber plantation, in the heart of the Amazon details the epic clash between Ford and the jungle and its inhabitants, as the tycoon attempted to force his will on the natural world. (Description from NoveList)

An orphan, Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when she meets Graça, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron. Born to wildly different worlds, the girls quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music will become the only way out of the life to which each was born... but only one is destined to be a star. (Description from catalog)

Sponsored by the poet Pablo Neruda to flee the violence of the Spanish Civil War, a pregnant widow and an army doctor unite in an arranged marriage, only to be swept up by the early days of World War II. (Description from NoveList.)

Neither Mason, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America's long post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet war also exerts a terrible draw that neither can shake. Where else in the world can such a person go? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US, with its patented fusion of intelligence dominance and quick-striking special operators, has partnered with local government to stamp out a vicious civil war and keep the predatory narco gangs at bay.
(Description from catalog)

A sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions -- the much anticipated masterpiece from Juan Gabriel Vasquez. (Description from NoveList)

A portrait of the cult leader behind the Jonestown Massacre examines his personal life, from his extramarital affairs and drug use to his fraudulent faith healing practices and his decision to move his followers to Guyana, sharing new details about the events leading to the 1978 tragedy. (Description from catalog)

In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a "coolie" the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. Now, in Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter Gaiutra Bahadur embarks on a journey into the past to find her. (Description from NoveList)

"Santiago, a political prisoner in Uruguay, was jailed after a brutal military coup that saw many of his comrades flee elsewhere. Santiago, feeling trapped, can do nothing but write letters to his family, and try to stay sane. Far away, his nine-year-olddaughter Beatrice wonders at the marvels of 1970s Buenos Aires, but her grandpa and mother--Santiago's beautiful, careworn wife, Graciela--struggle to adjust to a life in exile."

A woman tests the limits of what she is willing to do to secure her future in turbulent modern Venezuela overrun by violent revolutionaries. (Description from NoveList)