Popular Books Adapted into Popular Films

A list of lauded books that have been made into beloved films.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje
Paper Book
At the end of World War II, the lives of four people--a young American nurse, her dying English patient, a handless American thief, and an Indian soldier in the British army--intertwine in a deserted Italian villa.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Paper Book
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages,...
Roots
Alex Haley
Paper Book
One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book sold over one...
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their correspondence. With a new Preface by the author.
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Paper Book
n celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is the only paperback edition now available of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Paper Book
Publication of this exacting new translation of Tolstoy's great Anna signifies a literary event of the first magnitude Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but...
Atonement
Ian McEwan
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author.
Dracula
Bram Stoker
Paper Book
Count Dracula sleeps in a silent tomb beneath his desolate castle. His eyes are stony and his cheeks are deathly pale. But on his lips, there is a mocking smile-and a trickle of fresh blood. He has been dead for centuries, yet he may never die . . . Here begins the most celebrated vampire story in...
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
Paper Book
A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author ofA Home at the End of the WorldandFlesh and Blood. InThe Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia...
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Paper Book
"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!" Throughout the hardships of her childhood - spent with a severe aunt and abusive cousin, and later at the austere Lowood charity school - Jane Eyre clings to a sense of self-worth, despite of her treatment from those close to her. At...
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
Paper Book
Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy’s first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy. Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot...
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
Paper Book
William Goldman's beloved novel has sold over one million copies. A movie, released twenty years ago, perfectly captured the spirit of the book and has introduced new fans to its pages ever since. In 1941 a young boy lies bedridden from pneumonia. His perpetually disheveled and unattractive father,...
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
Paper Book
Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind--winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time--has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The...
The Shining
Stephen King
Paper Book
Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their young son Danny move into the Overlook Hotel, where Jack has been hired as the winter caretaker. Cut off from civilization for months, Jack hopes to battle alcoholism and uncontrolled rage while writing a play. Evil forces residing in the Overlook--which has...
True Grit
Charles Portis
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Charles Portis's True Grit is "an epic and a legend" (Washington Post), a story of danger and adventure in the Old West--the basis for two award-winning films, the first starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role, as...
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Paper Book
The national bestseller from Jeffrey Eugenides, the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of Middlesex and The Marriage Plot With a New Introduction by Emma Cline Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin...
Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally
Paper Book
The basis for the Oscar-winning Spielberg movie, this novel recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, an Aryan who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Room
Emma Donoghue
Paper Book
The award-winning bestseller that became one of the most talked about and memorable novels of the decade, Room is "utterly gripping...a heart-stopping novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).   Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her...
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * In this modern classic, the acclaimed author of The Shards explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. "A seminal book." --The Washington Post
Trainspotting
Irvine Welsh
Paper Book
It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn did for his. Rents, Sick Boy, Mother Superior, Swanney, Spuds, and Seeker are as unforgettable a clutch of junkies, rude boys, and psychos as readers will ever encounter. Trainspotting was made into the 1996...

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