Recommended Reads for Adults

Recommended Reads: June 2025

Do you ever think about just how much we don’t know about our world? Do you ever consider the root of common myths, and feel intrigued by strange happenstances? This June I encourage you to let fantastical events rooted in the real world engage and nurture your imagination. Lean into the unknown and explore the whimsy that our world and our minds have to offer with magical realism!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, 2015. (DB102743, BR024915)

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. Meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café's time-traveling offer, to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early-onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know. But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold.

Chocolat [#1, Chocolat series] by Joanne Harris, 1999. (DB049086)

On the first Sunday in Lent, newcomers Vianne Rocher and her young daughter Anouk open a chocolate shop, La CeÌleste Praline, near the church in a small French village. Priest Monsieur Reynaud and Mademoiselle Rocher compete for the townspeople's attention.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, 2017. (BR022136, DB087691)

Set in an unnamed city with a strict social code, atheist Nadia rebels against the strictures put upon her. She falls in love with the gentle, religious-minded Saeed as their city falls into chaos and militias seize control, forcing the pair to flee together.

The Grass Dancer by Mona Susan Power, 1994. (DB042305)

Interlocking stories about the Sioux tribe of North Dakota. In these tales, which move freely from the 1860s to the 1970s and 1980s, we learn about the customs and folklore of the Sioux. Power writes of the arrival of a teacher for the reservation's children, of a young couple who must make peace with the ghosts of their ancestors, and of the anger, greed, jealousy, illness, injustice, and poverty that exist on the reservation.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue/La vida invisible de Addie Larue by Victoria Schwab, 2020. (DB100901, BR023467, DB104289 en español)

France, 1714. In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever--and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

Little, Big by John Crowley, 1981. (DB018485)

Poignant, adult fairy tale that begins in the 1880s on the imaginary estate of eccentric Victorian architect, John Drinkwater. One day attending a lecture on the supernatural, he is mesmerized by a young woman, Violet Bramble, who is said to have access to "other" worlds. This story tells of their marriage and chronicles five generations of their family--a clan of mystics, sibyls, fairies, and gnomes.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, 2011 (BR021370, DB073783)

At the Circus of Dreams magicians Celia and Marco are pitted against each other in an epic magical battle. Their mentors plan for it to have only one survivor, not foreseeing that Celia and Marco will fall in love.

One Hundred Years of Solitude/Cien Anos de Soledad by Gabriel García Márquez, 1967. (DB059490, DB060988 en español)

1820s to 1920s. Latin American epic tale follows seven generations of the Buendía family through triumphs and disasters that parallel the fortunes and misfortunes of their utopian town, Macondo. By the Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, 1995. (BRC01770, DB040461)

Sally and Gillian Owens are raised by their unusual aunts and cruelly teased by the other children. The older Owens sisters cast spells at twilight for women having problems with love. Gillian leaves home as soon as possible, breaking hearts along the way. Sensible Sally stays, marries, and has two daughters, until tragedy sends her packing, too. Now an event has gathered the Owens women together again.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn, 2020. (DB098952)

In 1995, seven-year-old Hawaiian boy Nainoa Flores falls overboard on a ship. He is rescued by sharks, which his family believes marks him as favored by the gods. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart.

Weyward by Emilia Hart, 2023. (DB113239, BR024933)

In 2019, Kate flees an abusive relationship in London for Crows Beck, a remote Cumbrian village. Her destination is Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great Aunt Violet, an eccentric entomologist. As Kate struggles with the trauma of her past, she uncovers a secret about the women in her family. A secret dating back to 1619, when her ancestor Altha Weyward was put on trial for witchcraft.

The Wind Knows My Name /El viento conoce mi nombre by Isabel Allende, 2023 (BR025001, DB115139, DB115997 en español)

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht-the night his family loses everything. As her child's safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination.

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