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 : a novel
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
#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...
Cocaine blues : a Phryne Fisher mystery
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 dressmaker
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 : [a novel]
Harper, Jane
Paper Book
"I love Jane Harper's Australia-based mysteries." --Stephen King NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM IFC FILMS STARRING ERIC BANA INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A breathless page-turner, driven by the many revelations Ms. Harper dreams up...You'll...
Force of nature : [a novel]
Harper, Jane
Paper Book
Goodreads Choice Award Finalist (Mystery & Thriller, 2018) BookBrowse Best Books of 2018 Winner of the Prix Polar Award for Best International NovelBookRiot's 25 Best Suspense Books from 2018 Davitt Awards shortlist for Adult Crime Novel 2018 ...
Jasper Jones
Silvey, Craig
Digital file
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
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
Flowers, fire and fairy tales are the elements that will forever shape nine-year-old Alice Hart's life, in The Lost Flower's of Alice Hart, the international bestseller by Holly Ringland. Alice Hart lives in isolation by the sea, where her mother's enchanting flowers and their...
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
A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory direktor Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally uses the actual testimony of the...
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
Ebook
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
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.