Skip to main content
Homepage of Wilmette Public Library

Wilmette Public Library

9:00am-5:00pm
(847) 256-5025

Wilmette Public Library
1242 Wilmette Ave.
Wilmette , IL 60091
United States

View on Google Maps
Sun: 12:00pm-5:00pm
Mon: 9:00am-9:00pm
Tue: 9:00am-9:00pm
Wed: 9:00am-9:00pm
Thu: 9:00am-9:00pm
Fri: 9:00am-9:00pm
Sat: 9:00am-5:00pm
My Account

Main navigation

  • Books & Media
    • Borrow
      • Catalog
      • Library of Things
      • Museum Passes
    • Downloads & Streaming
      • Ebooks & Audiobooks
      • Magazines & Newspapers
      • Music, Movies & TV
    • Recommendations
      • Recommended Reads
      • Suggest a Title
      • From Our Librarians
  • Research
    • Online Resources
      • All Resources
      • Homework Help (K-8)
      • Homework Help (Teens)
      • Online Learning
    • Research by Topic
      • Business
      • Genealogy
      • Job Search
      • Local History
  • Events
    • Calendar
      • All Events
      • Kids Events
      • Teen Events
      • Adult Events
      • Newsletter Download
    • Programs & Series
      • Concerts & Presentations
      • Book Discussions
      • Storytimes
      • Technology Classes
      • Suggest a Program
    • Spotlight Programs
      • Wilmette Reads
      • Winter Reading Club
      • Let's Learn Together
  • Services
    • Services For
      • Kids & Families
      • Teens
      • Teachers
      • Local Authors
    • At the Library
      • The Studio
      • Computers & Media Stations
      • Print, Copy, Scan, Fax
      • Reserve a Room
      • Tax Information
    • Using the Library
      • Get a Library Card
      • Borrowing & Fees
      • Delivery Services
      • Notary Services
      • Accessibility
  • About Us
    • Get Involved
      • Employment
      • Volunteering
      • Friends of the Library
      • Donations
    • Information
      • Contact Us
      • Plan your Visit
      • About the Library
      • Library Updates
    • Board & Administration
      • Management Team
      • Board of Trustees
      • Policies
      • Budget & Finance
      • Projects & Initiatives
      • Strategic Plan 2023-27
  • Wilmette Reads Community Reading Series: Adults & Teens December 15–February 15 Learn More >>
  • Winter Reading Club 2026 slide
  • Collections on the Move! Improvements to the First Floor and Lower Level will impact some collections and services.   Stay up to date on the latest with this project.
  • Skip the subcription!
Previous
Next

From Our Librarians

red, white and blue voting sticker that says "vote"

Civic Engagement for the Whole Family

The primary election is just around the corner and it's time to get the whole family excited about civic engagement!

Read More about Civic Engagement for the Whole Family
Toddlers doing different activities using scissors, tape, and crayon.

Tape, Scissors & Smiles: Fine Motor Fun for Little Dabblers at Home

Grab some tape and scissors—you’re ready for a sensory adventure at home!

Read More about Tape, Scissors & Smiles: Fine Motor Fun for Little Dabblers at Home
View More

New Books

  • Image for "This Is Where the Serpent Lives"

    This Is Where the Serpent Lives

    A stunning new work from universally acclaimed Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose debut short story collection won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

    NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026: Town & Country, Bustle, AARP, Kirkus

    Moving from Pakistan’s dazzling chaotic cities to its lawless feudal countryside, This Is Where the Serpent Lives powerfully evokes contemporary feudal Pakistan, following the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters whose lives are linked through violence and tragedy, triumph, and love. Orphaned as a little boy and fending for himself in the city streets, Yazid rises to a place of responsibility and respect in the Lahore household of Colonel Atar, a powerful industrialist and politician, only to find that position threatened by conflicting loyalties and misplaced trust. Born on Colonel Atar’s country estate to a poor gardener, Saqib is entrusted with the management of a pioneering business, but he overreaches and finds himself an outlaw, confronting the violence of the corrupt Punjab Police. The colonel’s son competes with his cherished brother for the love of a woman and discovers that her choice colors his life with unexpected darkness as well as light.

    In matters of power and money and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between paths that are moral and just and more worldly choices that allow them to survive in the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their culture. Intimate and epic, elegiac and profoundly moving, This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a tour de force destined to become a classic of contemporary literature.

  • cover of lost lambs

    Lost Lambs

    Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Vulture, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, The Times (UK), Our Culture, and Harper's Bazaar

    “I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters.” —Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

    “Madeline Cash is a voice like no other.” —Lena Dunham

    “I’ve read entire books that contain less wit and inventiveness than a single one of Cash’s sentences.” —Eric Puchner, New York Times-bestselling author of Dream State

    “With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

    Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction. 

    The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens.

    Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.

    Irreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With it, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.

  • cover for anatomy of an alibi

    Anatomy of an Alibi

    FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FIRST LIE WINS

    Two women. One dead husband. And only one alibi.

    “Elston expertly unravels a web of secrets and lies. You won’t be able to put this excellent thriller down until the final shocking page.” —Megan Miranda

    Everyone at Chantilly’s Bar noticed out-of-towner Camille Bayliss. Red lips, designer heels, sipping a Negroni. But that woman wasn’t Camille Bayliss. It was Aubrey Price.

    Camille Bayliss appears to have the picture-perfect life; she’s married to hotshot lawyer Ben and is the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana family. Only nothing is as it seems: Camille believes Ben has been hiding dirty secrets for years, but she can’t find proof because he tracks her every move.

    Aubrey Price has been haunted by the terrible night that changed her life a decade ago, and she’s convinced Benjamin Bayliss knows something about it. Living in a house full of criminals, Aubrey understands there’s more than one way to get to the truth—and she may have found the best way in.

    Aubrey and Camille hatch a plan. It sounds simple: For twelve hours, Aubrey will take Camille’s place. Camille will spy on Ben, and the two women will get the answers they desperately seek.

    Except the next morning, Ben is found murdered. Both women need an airtight alibi, but only one of them has it. And one false step is all it takes for everything to come undone.

  • "the rest of our lives" cover

    The Rest of Our Lives

    FINALIST FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE

    “Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend as he navigates the road up ahead. A profoundly moving experience.” —Ann Patchett

    “Deeply human...a beautifully quiet and devastating book.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

    A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle-age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

    When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair twelve years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work.

    So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past—an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son—en route, maybe, to California. He’s moving towards a future he hasn’t even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he’s made that have brought him to this particular present. Pitch-perfect, tender, and keenly observed, The Rest of Our Lives is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.

  • "when the fireflies dance" cover

    When the Fireflies Dance

    Inspired by a shocking true story, this haunting debut novel of love, brotherhood, resilience, and redemption set in Pakistan calls to mind the modern classics The Kite Runner and The Beekeeper of Aleppo. 

    On the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a large yellow moon hung low in the sky when the men came with dogs and guns and cricket bats. In front of his family’s small hut on the edge of a looming brick kiln, Lalloo’s brother was murdered.

    Unable to escape the memory of that horrible night, Lalloo’s parents and sisters remain trapped, the kiln chimney churning black smoke into the sky as the family slave, brick by brick, to pay off their debts. To rescue them, Lalloo must free himself from his past and carve out his own destiny.

  • Image for "Bread of Angels"

    Bread of Angels

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just Kids

    A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, THE NEW YORKER

    “God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. A post–World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex where we enter the child’s world of the imagination. Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises, and searches for sacred silver pennies.

    The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative role models as she begins to write poetry then lyrics, ultimately merging both into the songs of iconic recordings such as Horses, Wave, and Easter.

    She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Here, she invents a room of her own, a low table, a Persian cup, inkwell and pen, entering at dawn to write. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start a family.

    A series of profound losses mark her life. Grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again—the one constant in a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Smith on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.

  • "best offer wins" cover

    Best Offer Wins

    “It starts out feeling pretty light and fun, but I promise you, you have no idea where this story is going.” - Taylor Jenkins Reid, recommended for her Must-Read Book of 2025 in TIME Magazine 

    An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams? 

    Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).

    A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.

    Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.

  • "nobody's girl" cover

    Nobody's Girl

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell

    “Make no mistake: this is a book about power, corruption, industrial-scale sex abuse and the way in which institutions sided with the perpetrator over his victims. . . . But it is also a book about how a young woman becomes a hero. . . . Important [and] courageous.” —The Guardian

    The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.

    In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.

    Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.

    Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.

  • "the land in winter"

    The Land in Winter

    SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE

    WINNER
    2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
    2025 Winston Graham Historical Prize for Fiction

    "Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect...Superb."--Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

    December 1962: In a village deep in the English countryside, two neighboring couples begin the day. Local doctor Eric Parry commences his rounds in the village while his pregnant wife, Irene, wanders the rooms of their old house, mulling over the space that has grown between the two of them.

     

    On the farm nearby lives Irene's mirror image: witty but troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting. She spends her days trying on the idea of being a farmer's wife, but her head still swims with images of a raucous past that her husband, Bill, prefers to forget.
     

    When Rita and Irene meet across the bare field between their houses, a clock starts. There is still affection in both their homes; neither marriage has yet to be abandoned. But when the ordinary cold of December gives way--ushering in violent blizzards of the harshest winter in living memory--so do the secret resentments harbored in all four lives.
     

    An exquisite, page-turning examination of relationships, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling--proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of the most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.

     

    "Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight."--Hilary Mantel

     

  • "book of lives" cover

    Book of Lives

    How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures.

    'Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.'

    Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents - entomologist father, dietician mother - Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: 'It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.'), but also thrilling and beautiful.

    From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat's Eye to the Orwellian 1980s Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid's Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

    As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art - and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.

View All
Download & Stream x2 - Quick Link
Download & Stream

Download & Stream

Get a Card
Get a Card

Get a Card

Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading

Recommended Reading - Revised

Storytimes
Storytimes

Storytimes

Book a Room quick link icon
Book a Room quick link hover icon

Book a Room

Research
Research

Research

Upcoming Events

Sign up to receive emails from the library

Subscribe!

Wilmette Public Library

1242 Wilmette Ave.
Wilmette, Illinois 60091
(847) 256-5025
 

Hours

Monday-Friday 9am-9pm
Saturday 9am-5pm
Sunday 12pm-5pm

About Us

Contact Us
Donate
Employment
Board of Trustees
Accessibility

Connect with Us!

   
Library App
Back To Top