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
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Barracuda
Tsiolkas, Christos
Paper Book
Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Slap (soon to be an NBC miniseries) returns in an "immensely moving" (Sunday Times) story of a young athlete's coming of age   Fourteen-year-old Daniel Kelly is special. Despite his upbringing in working-class...
Big little lies
Moriarty, Liane
Paper Book
From the author of Here One Moment and The Husband's Secret comes the #1 New York Times bestselling novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE AWARD-WINNING HBO® SERIES STARRING REESE...
The book thief
Zusak, Markus
Paper Book
The extraordinary international bestseller from the author of new novel Bridge of Clay.NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE "Brilliant and hugely ambitious ... the kind of book that can be life changing" The New York TimesIt is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath.Death has never been busier,...
Boy swallows universe
Dalton, Trent
Paper Book
'The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade' Sydney Morning Herald 'Astonishing, captivating ... a wild, beautiful, heart-exploding ride' Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling novel that has taken Australia, and the world, by storm. Brisbane, 1985:...
The brush-off
Maloney, Shane
Paper Book
When you dabble with death, there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun. A born detective despite himself, assistant minister of culture Murray Whelan digs, and the deeper he goes, the more puzzling the mystery of a young artist's death becomes. Tightly plotted, funny, and briskly paced, this first...
Cocaine blues
Greenwood, Kerry
Paper Book
This is where it all started! The first classic Phryne Fisher mystery, featuring our delectable heroine, cocaine, communism and adventure. Phryne leaves the tedium of English high society for Melbourne, Australia, and never looks back. The London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but...
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...
Dressmaker, the (fti)
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
Ebook
Above the three coffins, a family of four stared down from a blown-up photograph. Their static smiles were overlarge and pixelated. Falk recognised the picture from the news. It had been used a lot. Beneath, the names of the dead were spelled out in native flowers. Luke. Karen. Billy. Falk...
The family Law
Law, Benjamin
Paper Book
My family aren't the outdoors type. Despite being raised on the coast, Mum detested visits to the beach (all the sand it brought into the house), while Dad disapproved of wearing thongs ('It splits the toes'). We never camped. All those things involved in camping - pitching a tent; cooking on...
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
Full of unforgettable characters, a page-turning pace and outrageously good dialogue, this is a glorious novel - thoughtful, funny, heartbreaking and wise - about outsiders and secrets, and what it really means to be a hero. Now a major feature film directed by Rachel Perkins, starring Toni Collette...
The light between oceans
Stedman, M. L.
Ebook
The lost flowers of Alice Hart
Ringland, Holly
Paper Book
The most enchanting debut novel of 2018, this is an irresistible, deeply moving and romantic story of a young girl, daughter of an abusive father, who has to learn the hard way that she can break the patterns of the past, live on her own terms and find her own strength.
Nine perfect strangers
Moriarty, Liane
Paper Book
From the no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Husband's Secret, and Big Little Lies with new novel Apples Never Fall out now.NOW A MAJOR TV MINISERIES ON AMAZON PRIMEThe retreat at health and wellness resort Tranquillum House promises total transformation. Nine stressed city dwellers are...
On the beach
Shute, Nevil
Paper Book
Nevil Shute's most powerful novel--a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication--is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world. After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud...
Schindler's ark
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
Set in a fictional Riverina town at the height of a devastating drought, Scrublands is one of the most powerful, compelling and original crime novels to be written in Australia.
The secret river
Grenville, Kate
Paper Book
After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is sentenced in 1806 to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among...
The slap
Tsiolkas, Christos
Paper Book
The basis for the NBC event series directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Uma Thurman, Peter Sarsgaard, and Zachary Quinto. In this powerful and riveting novel reminiscent of Liane Moriarty's Truly, Madly, Guilty, literary phenomenon Christos Tsiolkas unflinchingly...
The thorn birds
McCullough, Colleen
Paper Book
Colleen McCullough's sweeping saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback has enthralled readers the world over. This is the chronicle of three generations of Clearys, ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness,...
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...
Wake in fright
Cook, Kenneth
Paper Book
Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. A middle class teacher, he finds himself trapped in a nightmarish outback community crippled by gambling debts. An undisputed modern classic, it is the original and the greatest outback horror...

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