Page-to-Screen: 25 Excellent Book-to-Movie Adaptations

Book Summary

In the 1580s, William Shakespeare married a woman named Anne (Agnes) Hathway. Together, the couple settled in Stratford and had three children: a daughter named Susanna and twins named Hamnet and Judith. Sadly, Hamnet died at the age of only eleven. Several years later, Shakespeare wrote one of his most famous plays – Hamlet.

Agnes, rather than William, is the star of this story (in fact, William himself is never mentioned by name in the book, so as not to pull focus). This novel is a stunning portrayal of grief and its potential influence on one of the most famous plays in history.

Book Summary

As a young attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, the author of this memoir, Bryan Stevenson, founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office dedicated to helping poor, incarcerated, and wrongfully convicted defendants.

One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was wrongly convicted of the murder of a young white woman. He was sentenced to death despite the consistent declaration of his innocence.

Book Summary

Poppy and Alex became unexpected best friends on a car share ride home from college, despite their utter lack of things in common. Poppy is an extroverted wild child, while Alex is a pragmatic introvert. As the years go by, Poppy has a good life in New York City while Alex remains in their small hometown. But the duo has still reunited each summer for one glorious week of vacation together.

But two years ago, everything changed. They haven’t spoken since. Poppy has everything she could want in life, but remains discontent and knows the last time she was truly happy was her last trip with Alex. So, in a desperate attempt to find joy again, she contacts Alex, hoping for one more trip to make everything right.

Book Summary

Pride and Prejudice follows the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Many of our readers dubbed this classic love story the original rom-com and Mr. Darcy the original grumpy male love interest who was dark and broody in all the right ways. 

Elizabeth is one of five daughters living on a country estate, and her mother is aggressively trying to matchmake for her and her sisters. When Darcy, a wealthy, aristocratic landowner, arrives in the village along with a group of other wealthy bachelors, the Bennet family is immediately put off by his cold and arrogant manner. Ultimately, Elizabeth and Darcy must overcome first impressions and prejudices if either of them is to find love.

Book Summary

Harold retired recently. Now every day seems exactly the same as the last, and everything he does seems to irritate his wife. Then one day an unexpected letter arrives in the mail from a woman he hasn’t seen or spoken to in twenty years – Queenie Hennessy. She’s dying of cancer and is writing to tell Harold goodbye.

Harold writes a short letter of reply to Queenie, but on his way to the corner mailbox, a chance encounter convinces him that he must deliver the letter in person. The only problem is that Queenie is in hospice 600 miles away. With nothing but his yachting shoes and a light coat, Harold embarks on a pilgrimage from Kingsbridge, England, to Berwick-upon-Tweed, convinced that as long as he is walking, Queenie will remain alive.

Along the way, Harold meets a series of interesting characters, and memories of his life come rushing back to him.

Book Summary

Set against the devastating history of Afghanistan, The Kite Runner tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy, Amir, and the son of his father’s servant, Hassan.

Despite the divide of class and privilege, the two become as close as brothers, sharing a love of storytelling and kite flying in the streets of Kabul. But when a traumatic event shatters their childhood innocence, it begins to pull them apart and sends them down two very different paths in life.

Years later, Amir is given an unexpected opportunity to confront his past and the choices he made. His journey will test whether redemption is ever truly possible.

Book Summary

This novel is set in 1985 Alabama as gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode recounts her younger years to middle-aged Evelyn. Her stories transport you back to the 1930s when her friends Idgie and Ruth opened a cafe in tiny Whistle Stop, Alabama. While serving up good coffee and barbecue, the café was a place for friendship… and the occasional murder.

Book Summary

In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women are often on their own as the men leave looking for other work. However, the setting is also surrounded by the drug war, which is even more dangerous than the terrain and the abundant poisonous creatures. As a result, resourceful mothers learn to hide the beauty of their daughters as a form of protection by disguising them as boys or making them unattractive in other ways. 

Ladydi is one of these daughters, and you’ll quickly fall in love with her fierce intelligence and willingness to make the best of the circumstances in which she was born. When she’s offered the chance to leave Guerrero to become a nanny for a wealthy American family in Acapulco, she jumps at the opportunity to build a better, safer life for herself. However, the cartel still looms and impacts her life in unexpected ways. 

Book Summary

Millie has a chance to start fresh when she gets a job working for Nina and Andrew Winchester as a live-in housekeeper and cook. She tries to ignore the annoyances of the job, like Nina constantly making messes just to watch her clean them up. Despite the beautiful wife, dreamy house, and fancy cars, Andrew seems more broken each day. His eyes are full of pain behind his outward appearance of a perfect life.

When Millie can’t resist trying on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses, she has no idea what the small act will set in motion. Soon, she realizes her attic bedroom door only locks from the outside. The Winchesters may have even darker secrets than her own.

Book Summary

This is a remarkable nonfiction account of a group of Black female mathematicians, known as “human computers,” who enabled some of America’s most outstanding space achievements, like launching the first unmanned rockets, followed by astronauts.

While brilliant Black women were initially relegated to teaching math in segregated public schools, many of these women suddenly found new opportunities open to them when the aeronautics industry suffered labor shortages during WWII. As a result, NASA was in dire need of anyone who possessed high-level math skills. This book interweaves the stories of four African American women who answered the call over the course of three decades. These women participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes from WWII through the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Space Race.

Book Summary

Ove (pronounced Oo-veh) is a nearly 60-year-old Swedish man. He’s an ill-tempered, cynical protagonist who doesn’t like change… or anything or anyone, for that matter. He’s living a solitary life until a boisterous young family moves in next door. Not only do they break all the residents’ association rules (something Ove cannot tolerate), but their chatty young daughters disrupt his strict routines.

It’s hard to say too much more about this book without giving anything away. But know that this novel is at equal turns frustrating, charming, insightful, touching, and hilarious.

Book Summary

Rachel is a New Yorker who agrees to spend the summer in Singapore, her boyfriend Nick’s home country. He just failed to mention one crucial aspect of his life. He is considered Singapore’s most eligible bachelor, and his family is crazy rich. The family is essentially royalty, with younger generations expected to comply with the older generations’ wishes for their life (and spouse) choices.

This book is rich with descriptions of Singapore’s sights, sounds, and tastes. It gives a very entertaining look at the lifestyle of the 1% from both the inside and outside perspectives. According to Angela’s Singaporean friends, these crazy stories are actually not so far-fetched.

Book Summary

Six days after becoming the first astronaut to walk on Mars, Mark now thinks he’ll be the first to die there. A surprise dust storm caused his crew to evacuate after he was presumed dead. Although he is left alone with no way to communicate and short supplies, it’s time for his engineering skills to shine.

With extreme dedication and ingenuity, he conquers obstacle after obstacle. But will it be enough to survive until someone discovers he is still alive and can return to pick him up?

Book Summary

Saul Indian Horse wants peace. After hitting rock bottom with alcohol and entering an inpatient treatment facility, he discovers that healing must come through telling his life story as a member of the Ojibway tribe. Throughout the book, you’ll walk through Saul’s history, which includes being taken from his family and sent to a residential school, which was a common tragedy for many Indigenous children. His heritage was again attacked as he got older and experienced harsh racism.

While the book will open your eyes to the challenges faced by Indigenous people in Canada, it also shares Saul’s joys along the way and describes the landscape of northern Ontario in detail.

Book Summary

As London is emerging from WWII, Juliet Ashton, a writer, is looking for the subject of her next book. She begins exchanging letters with a man she’s never met – a native of the island of Guernsey. Through their letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of the man and his eccentric friends. Though they range from pig farmers to phrenologists, they are all literature lovers.

As Juliet learns about their tastes in books, she also comes to understand the impact that the German occupation has had on their lives.

This is a great choice for those who love epistolary novels, which are told through written correspondence between the characters.

Book Summary

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, Kidd lives a solitary existence. But when he is offered a $50 gold piece to transport an orphan who has been held captive by the Kiowa back to her relatives in San Antonio, he sets out on a 400-mile journey with the young girl.

It’s a treacherous journey, made more so by the fact that Johanna has forgotten the English language and tries to escape at every chance. But slowly, Kidd begins to earn her trust. When they finally arrive in San Antonio, the reunion with Johanna’s extended family is neither happy nor welcome, and Kidd will face a difficult dilemma.

Book Summary

Sixteen-year-old Kate has been fighting leukemia since she was very young. Thirteen-year-old Anna is the healthy one, yet she’s undergone countless surgeries and transfusions. That’s because Anna was conceived, by way of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, to be a bone marrow match for Kate.

Most teenagers begin to question who they really are, but for Anna, this question is much more complex. That leads her to a decision that has the potential to tear her family apart, and may even have fatal consequences for Kate.

Book Summary

When the teenager from one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappears in 1966, her uncle is determined to find out what happened to her. For forty years, he wondered what really happened. Nearing the end of his life, he hires a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist and his angry and tattooed punk hacker prodigy to help him uncover the truth. The chilly Swedish backdrop sets the scene for this Nordic Noir novel that combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

WARNING: This novel includes some very graphic scenes, including sexual assault.

Book Summary

This hugely popular and highly rated YA novel is a charming and witty coming-of-age story. The main character, Simon, is gay, but not openly. After an email that would out him to the school falls into the wrong hands, he’s blackmailed into playing wingman for classmate Martin. But worse than that, he wouldn’t only be outing himself by refusing. The boy he’s been emailing, nicknamed Blue, would be outed too. 

The emails with Blue have been more and more flirtatious, and Simon has to find a way to break out of his comfort zone before he’s forced out. But he doesn’t want to upset his friends or lose his chance for happiness with Blue along the way.

Book Summary

From the outside, Nick and Amy seemed to have a picture-perfect marriage. But on their fifth anniversary, Amy goes missing from their rented McMansion in the fictional town of North Carthage, along Missouri’s Mississippi River. Nick quickly becomes the prime suspect. Under the microscope of the resulting police investigation and media frenzy, it becomes apparent that their happy marriage might not have been so happy after all and that Nick – the town’s golden boy – might not be so squeaky clean.

Even as Amy’s fiercely doting parents put more pressure on him, Nick stands by his innocence. But if he didn’t do it, then where is his wife? And what’s in that gift box hidden in the back of Amy’s bedroom closet? Gone Girl combines sharp-edged wit and chilling prose to make reading this book feel like an addiction.

Book Summary

Ten-year-old Auggie has a facial deformity that previously prevented him from attending a traditional school. In his own words, “I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.”

Wonder begins from Auggie’s point of view as he starts 5th grade, but soon switches to include his classmates. While there are also chapters told from the perspective of his teenage sister, her boyfriend, and others, Auggie remains the focus of the story throughout. The multiple perspectives create a beautiful portrait of Auggie’s community as they struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.

Book Summary

Skeeter has returned home from college to her family’s cotton plantation, where, despite trying to act like a proper Southern lady, she seems to constantly disappoint her mother. 

Her true ambition, however, is to be a writer. The only job she’s able to find is one she is completely unqualified for – writing a housekeeping advice column for the local paper. Having virtually no experience of her own with housekeeping, Skeeter turns to her friend’s maid, the very poised Aibileen, for help. 

As she gets to know Aibileen and Aibileen’s friend, the very sassy Minny, more intimately, Skeeter is inspired to help tell their stories. She pitches the idea to write the narratives of 12 Black maids, which is a very risky project for all of them.

Book Summary

Brett seems to have it all – a good job, a spacious loft, and a handsome boyfriend. Her life checks all the boxes of where she thinks she’s supposed to be at thirty-four years old. But according to who?

When her mom passes away, Brett is surprised to learn that her inheritance comes with one major stipulation. She must first complete the list of life goals that she penned at the young age of fourteen. She can’t understand what her mom was thinking. Her teenage goals certainly don’t line up with her adult ambitions, and some of them seem downright impossible.

How can she have a relationship with her father, who passed away seven years ago? And how can she become an awesome teacher when she picked a completely different career path?

She reluctantly sets out on the journey her mother has laid before her, and along the way, she’ll discover that sometimes the best things come from unexpected places, and it’s never too late to reinvent your life!

Book Summary

Alex is the early 20-something son of the first female US President, and Prince Henry is the 2nd in line to the British Throne. Alex considers Henry his nemesis, and the two get into an embarrassing scuffle during a royal wedding.

Both sides develop a damage control plan. In order to calm the press and convince them that the sons of the US and England aren’t foes, Alex and Henry agree to make public appearances as friends over the course of several months. After spending more time together and exchanging many amusing text messages, Alex realizes there is more to Henry than he assumed.

Soon, the relationship between Alex and Henry begins to feel real – and it all begins with a New Year’s Eve kiss!

Book Summary

Bernadette lives with her husband and her teenage daughter in Seattle, a city where she’s never felt she fits in. She was once a renowned architect, but now spends most of her time in the house, hiding from the other moms of her daughter’s elite prep school.

Unlike her Microsoft employee husband, Elgie, who has fully embraced the granola-eating, public transport-using, bike-riding culture of 2010s Seattle, Bernadette spends her days at home, relying on a virtual assistant in India for many of her daily tasks. This becomes a real problem when her daughter’s stellar report card earns her a family cruise to Antarctica, and Bernadette becomes overwhelmed by the planning and preparations. When Bernadette disappears before the trip, her daughter Bee is determined to track her down, unraveling a web of secrets.

Much of this book is told in epistolary form, including notes from Bee’s school, email exchanges between Bernadette and her virtual assistant, and catty moms communicating about Bernadette’s eccentricities.