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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Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a heartbreaking coming of age story and a surprising murder investigation. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens's debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were,...
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The bestselling author of Warlight traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. "A rare spellbinding web of dreams." --Time   The nurse Hana, exhausted by...
Bridget Jones's Diary
Helen Fielding
Now a major motion picture starring Renee Zellwegger and Hugh Grant! "130 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds overnight? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier (repulsive, horrifying notion)); alcohol units 2 (excellent) cigarettes 21 (poor but...
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made...
Roots
Alex Haley
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...
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Discover this beautiful and charming classic book behind the new major film. 'Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another' Christmas won't be the same this year for Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, as their father is away fighting in the...
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their correspondence. With a new Preface by the author.
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
One of Wharton's most renowned novels--and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize--exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York. * With an introduction by Peter Washington The novel...
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak's widely acclaimed novel comes gloriously to life in a magnificent new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the award-winning translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and to whom, The New York Review of Books declared, "the English...
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
The must-have Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of one of the greatest Russian novels ever written Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as "flawless," Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous...
Atonement
Ian McEwan
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.
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
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...
DRACULA (REVISED)
Stoker, Bram
Bram Stoker's peerless tale of desperate battle against a powerful, ancient vampire When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England:...
The Godfather
Mario Puzo
The unforgettable saga of an American crime family that became a #1 bestseller and global phenomenon.   Since its release in 1969, The Godfather has made an indelible mark on American crime fiction. From the mind of master storyteller Mario Puzo, it traces the Corleone...
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as...
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is engaged as governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester. Her integrity and independence are tested to the limit as their love for each other grows, and the secrets of Mr Rochester's past are revealed. Charlotte Brontë's novel about the...
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest /
Kesey, Ken.
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the...
Practical Magic
Alice Hoffman
*25th Anniversary Edition*--with an Introduction by the Author! The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic, Magic Lessons, and The Book of Magic....
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
William Goldman's beloved story of Buttercup, Westley, and their fellow adventurers. A tale of true love and high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts--The Princess Bride is a modern storytelling classic. As Florin...
Gone with the wind /
Mitchell, Margaret,
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. Widely considered The Great American Novel, and often remembered for...
The Shining
Stephen King
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror. Jack Torrance takes a job as the caretaker of the remote Overlook...
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy...
True Grit
Charles Portis
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...
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed
NATIONAL BEST SELLER * Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection. * A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.   At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought...
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides
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 list /
Keneally, Thomas.
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...
The lord of the rings /
Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel),
Immerse yourself in Middle-earth with J.R.R. Tolkien's classic masterpieces behind the films... This special 50th anniversary edition includes three volumes of The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King), along with an...
Fight Club /
Palahniuk, Chuck.
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. In his debut novel, Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an...
Room
Emma Donoghue
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...
Breakfast at Tiffany's = Petit déjeuner chez Tiffany /
Capote, Truman,
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
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
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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