Recommended Reads for Adults

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Recommended Reads: May 2024

Are you ready to undertake a beefy reading project? Boy, do we have ideas for you! Find a hearty book series that you can dig into! Allow yourself to get lost in the vast depth and breadth of characters and worlds that can be developed over several volumes. So get comfy and let these series full of many, many books take you on many, many journeys!

Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole
Hasty Series Description: Hot royals falling in love
3 Books + 2 Novellas
Total Audio: 42 hours, 53 minutes

Start Here: A Princess in Theory [#1], 2018. (DB090825)
Between grad school and multiple jobs, Naledi Smith doesn’t have time for fairy tales…or patience for the constant e-mails claiming she’s betrothed to an African prince. Sure. Right. Delete! As a former foster kid, she’s learned that the only things she can depend on are herself and the scientific method, and a silly e-mail won’t convince her otherwise. Prince Thabiso is the sole heir to the throne of Thesolo, shouldering the hopes of his parents and his people. At the top of their list? His marriage. Ever dutiful, he tracks down his missing betrothed. When Naledi mistakes the prince for a pauper, Thabiso can’t resist the chance to experience life—and love—without the burden of his crown. The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and flirty friendship quickly evolves into passionate nights. But when the truth is revealed, can a princess in theory become a princess ever after? – Book description from author’s website
 

A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas
Hasty Series Description: Love and adventure with faeries
4 Books + 1 Companion Book
Total Braille: 32 volumes
Total Audio: 93 hours, 4 minutes

Start Here: A Court of Thorns and Roses [#1], 2015. (BR021862, DB081722, en español DB103209)
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he’s not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever. – Book description from Goodreads
 

School for Good and Evil series by Soman Chainani
Hasty Series Description: Kids placed in metaphorical good/bad boxes, and then they break out of them!
6 Books
Total Audio: 100 hours, 33 minutes

Start Here: The School for Good and Evil Trilogy (#1: The School for Good and Evil), 2016. (DB082483)
With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she'll earn top marks at the School for Good and join the ranks of past students like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil. The two girls soon find their fortunes reversed—Sophie's dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust among handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are? – Book description from publisher’s website
 

Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire
Hasty Series Description: Kids keep going through magical doorways
9 Books
Total Braille: 8 volumes
Total Audio: 40 hours, 21 minutes

Start Here: Every Heart a Doorway (#1), 2016. (BR022541, DB084054)
What happens to children after they return from adventures in magical lands? Sometimes when they cannot cope with the real world, they end up at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. Nancy is a new arrival, trying to fit in, when a killer strikes. – Book description from KLAS
 

Temeraire Adventures series by Naomi Novik
Hasty Series Description: War dragons, and Napoleon is there!
9 Books
Total Braille: 4 volumes
Total Audio: 115 hours, 11 minutes

Start Here: His Majesty’s Dragon [#1], 2007. (BR021433, DB064445)
Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire. – Book description from Goodreads
 

Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
Hasty Series Description: People in complicated relationships traveling through time
9 Books + 1 Book of Stories
Total Audio: 433 hours, 25 minutes

Start Here: Outlander [#1], 1991. (DB036535)
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. – Book description from Goodreads
 

Flavia de Luce series by Alan C. Bradley
Hasty Series Description: Little girl solving crimes
10 Books
Total Braille: 37 volumes
Total Audio: 89 hours, 50 minutes

Start Here: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie [#1], 2009. (BR020172, DB070410)
It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.” – Book description from Goodreads

Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear
Hasty Series Description: Female private detective breaking the glass ceiling post-WWII
17 Books
Total Braille: 61 volumes
Total Audio: 175 hours, 52 minutes

Start Here: Maisie Dobbs [#1], 2003. (BR015352, DB067808)
Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, began her working life at the age of thirteen as a servant in a Belgravia mansion, only to be discovered reading in the library by her employer, Lady Rowan Compton. Fearing dismissal, Maisie is shocked when she discovers that her thirst for education is to be supported by Lady Rowan and a family friend, Dr. Maurice Blanche. But The Great War intervenes in Maisie’s plans, and soon after commencement of her studies at Girton College, Cambridge, Maisie enlists for nursing service overseas. Years later, in 1929, having apprenticed to the renowned Maurice Blanche, a man revered for his work with Scotland Yard, Maisie sets up her own business. Her first assignment, a seemingly tedious inquiry involving a case of suspected infidelity, takes her not only on the trail of a killer, but back to the war she had tried so hard to forget. – Book description from Goodreads
 

Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher
Hasty Series Description: PI/Wizard investigates supernatural lawlessness
17 Books + 2 Books of Stories
Total Braille: 81 volumes
Total Audio: 265 hours, 23 minutes

Start Here: Storm Front [#1], 2000. (BR021411, DB067342)
Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a—well, whatever. There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get interesting. – Book description from Goodreads
 

Psy-Changeling series by Nalini Singh
Hasty Series Description: Paranormal romance with psychics and shapeshifters
19 Books
Total Audio: 261 hours, 56 minutes

Start Here: Psy-Changeling Series, Books 1-4 (#1: Slave to Sensation), 2007. (DB083601)
In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of “rehabilitation”—the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was… Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy co-existence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several Changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion—and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities—or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation… – Book description from Goodreads
 

Emma Lord mystery series by Mary Daheim
Hasty Series Description: Small-town Washington newspaper editor keeps finding bodies
28 Books
Total Audio: 246 hours, 20 minutes

Start Here: The Alpine Advocate [#1], 1992. (DBC00604)
After a year as publisher-editor of the Alpine Advocate, Emma Lord feels fine about her move to this small town in the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains. What she really needs for her paper, though, is a big story. And she gets it--when handsome Mark Doukas, grandson of rich, old Neeny Doukas is murdered. Emma discovers that trying to get straight answers out of Neeny and his thin-lipped son is like poking a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes. What begins with an innocent story about the murdered man, ends with Emma conducting the most interesting, and probably the last, interview of her career from the wrong end of a .38.... – Book description from Goodreads
 

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
Hasty Series Description: Skewering classic works while still dealing with real-world issues
41 Books
Total Braille: 90 volumes
Total Audio: 331 hours, 12 minutes

Start Here: The Color of Magic [#1], 1983. (BR020840, DB060775, en español DB108873)
In a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown), a gleeful, explosive, wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There's an avaricious but inept wizard, a naive tourist whose luggage moves on hundreds of dear little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course THE EDGE of the planet... – Book description from Goodreads