Book to Screen

With the AACTA awards ceremony this month, it's a good time to check out some of the great Australian novels that have been adapted for the screen!

Updated January 16, 2024
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Barracuda
Tsiolkas, Christos
Paper Book
From the award-winning author of The Slap, a powerfully moving story of forgiveness and a young man's struggle towards maturity Barracuda tells the story of Danny, a talented young swimmer. Competitive swimming is the route from his working-class upbringing to, he hopes, fame...
Big little lies
Moriarty, Liane.
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestselling Author Pirriwee Public's annual school Trivia Night has ended in a shocking riot. One parent is dead. The school principal is horrified. As police investigate what appears to have been a tragic accident, signs begin to indicate that this devastating death might have been...
The book thief
Zusak, Markus
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME * A NEW YORK TIMES READER TOP 100 PICK FOR BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times...
Boy swallows universe
Dalton, Trent
Paper Book
"The best book I read this decade." --Sharon Van Etten in Rolling Stone "Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak. . . . Eli's remarkably poetic voice and his astonishingly open heart take the day. They enable him to carve out the best of what...
The Brush-Off A Murray Whelan Mystery
Maloney, Shane.
Ebook
Murray Whelan is the political advisor to the newly appointed minister of culture, Angelo ("Tell me, Murray, what are the Arts?") Agnelli, and he's hanging on to his job by his toenails. On his first day, the disgruntled young artist Marcus Taylor is found dead, drowned in the ornamental moat...
Cocaine blues : a Phryne Fisher mystery
Greenwood, Kerry.
Paper Book
From the author of the bestselling Phryne Fisher Series comes Cocaine Blues, the first historical mystery featuring the sensual, posh, and intrepid murder detective Phryne Fisher... "Phryne can not get enough of adventure and the reader can not get enough of Phryne."--Deadly Pleasures ...
The cry
FitzGerald, Helen
Paper Book
Longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award When a baby goes missing on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world. Lies, rumours...
The dressmaker : a novel
Ham, Rosalie.
Paper Book
A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture--now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving   After twenty years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage...
The dry
Harper, Jane
Paper Book
A small town hides big secrets in The Dry, an atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper. After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend,...
Force of nature
Harper, Jane
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ERIC BANA "I love Jane Harper's Australia-based mysteries." --Stephen King Goodreads Choice Award Finalist (Mystery & Thriller, 2018) BookBrowse Best Books of 2018 Winner of the Prix Polar Award for Best...
Jasper Jones : a novel
Silvey, Craig
Paper Book
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie's help. Terribly afraid but...
The light between oceans : a novel
Stedman, M. L.
Paper Book
The years-long New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Spielberg's Dreamworks is "irresistible...seductive...with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page" (O, The Oprah Magazine). After four harrowing years on the Western Front...
The lost flowers of Alice Hart
Ringland, Holly
Paper Book
An enchanting and captivating novel about how our untold stories haunt us -- and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower...
Nine perfect strangers
Moriarty, Liane
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, now a Hulu original series "If three characters were good in Big Little Lies, nine are even better in Nine Perfect Strangers." --Lisa Scottoline, The New York Times Book Review From the #1...
On the beach
Shute, Nevil
Paper Book
Following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, the inhabitants of a small Australian community await the inevitable after-effects of the bombs to reach them.
Schindler's list
Keneally, Thomas.
Paper Book
The acclaimed bestselling classic of Holocaust literature, winner of the Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the inspiration for the classic film--"a masterful account of the growth of the human soul" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). A...
Scrublands
Hammer, Chris
Paper Book
In this searing, "indisputable page-turner" (Associated Press), a town's dark secrets come to light in the aftermath of a young priest's unthinkable last act--in the vein of The Dry and Where the Crawdads Sing. In Riversend, an isolated Australian community...
The secret river
Grenville, Kate
Paper Book
A life of petty crime and poverty on the streets of 19th-century London sentences William Thornhill--along with his wife and children--to exile in the colonial outpost of Australia. But among the convicts of New South Wales there is a whisper of the possibility of freedom, away from Sydney and up...
The slap : a novel
Tsiolkas, Christos
Paper Book
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. In this remarkable...
The thorn birds
McCullough, Colleen
Paper Book
"Beautiful....Compelling entertainment." --New York Times One of the most beloved novels of all time, The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough's sweeping family saga of dreams, titanic struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback, returns to enthrall a new generation.<...
True history of the Kelly gang
Carey, Peter
Paper Book
Out of nineteenth-century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations, in this masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Exhilarating, hilarious, panoramic, and immediately engrossing, it is also—at a distance of many thousand miles...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.