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
Tender and brutal and blazingly brilliant, the new novel from the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap takes an unflinching look at modern Australia - at our hopes and dreams, our friendships and our families - and asks what it means to be a good person, and what it takes...
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
The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that is now a major motion picture, Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier...
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
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 cry
FitzGerald, Helen
CD
Dressmaker, the (fti)
Ham, Rosalie
Paper Book
The bestseller from the author of the upcoming new novel The Year of the Farmer. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING KATE WINSLET AND LIAM HEMSWORTHTilly Dunnage has come home to care for her mad old mother. She left the small Victorian town of Dungatar years before, and became an accomplished...
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
When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn't come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal...
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.
The light between oceans
Stedman, M. L.
Paper Book
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock. To this isolated island, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a...
The lost flowers of Alice Hart
Ringland, Holly
Paper Book
Winner of the 2019 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award. The international bestseller, now sold to over 30 territories internationally, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart tells the enchanting and compelling story of a young girl, daughter of an abusive father, who has to learn the hard...
Nine perfect strangers
Moriarty, Liane
Paper Book
#1 New York Times Bestselling AuthorEditor's Choice #2 TitleNine people gather at a remote health resort -- some to lose weight, some to reboot their life, some for reasons they can't even admit to themselves. Amidst the luxury and pampering, mindfulness and meditation, they know it might involve...
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
Made into the award-winning film 'Schindler's List'. In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar...
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
At a barbecue in a suburban Melbourne home, an unruly four-year-old boy is slapped by a man who isn't his father. It is a single act of violence, but this one slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen. The fallout from this split-second incident is huge. In his...
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
“I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.” In True...
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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