14 Great Books To Read Before They Hit The Screen

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Fans of the BBC3’s recent Normal People adaptation will be pleased to learn that Sally Rooney’s critically acclaimed debut – Conversations With Friends – is also due to get the TV treatment. The novel is a challenging exploration of the frictions and politics of female friendship, setting up a thrilling conflict between the protagonist’s lofty mind and carnal body as the relationships of several friends unfold in person and online. The best news is that the series will be directed by Normal People’s Lenny Abrahamson. Based on the casting of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Wright, we can’t wait to see who’ll play Frances and Bobbi.

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Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

The retreat at health-and-wellness resort Tranquillum House promises total transformation. Nine stressed city dwellers are keen to drop their literal and mental baggage and absorb the meditative ambience while enjoying their hot stone massages. Miles from anywhere, without cars or phones, they have no way to reach the outside world. Just time to think about themselves and get to know each other. Watching over them is the resort's director, a woman on a mission, but quite a different one from any the guests might have imagined. From the writer behind Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret, page-turner is set to become a Hulu series, with Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy in the lead roles. We can’t wait.

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The Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn

Hailed as the biggest thriller of 2018, you’ll want to read this dark, twisty novel before the major film – starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore – is released later this year. With an unreliable alcoholic-playing-detective for a protagonist, it’s easy to see why comparisons have been drawn with The Girl on the Train, but we think this is the better of the two. Anna’s lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours. When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to the picture-perfect family of three. But one evening, a frenzied scream rips across the silence, and Anna witnesses something no one was supposed to see. Now she must do everything she can to uncover the truth about what really happened.

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This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay

Adam Kay is in the process of pulling together a BBC comedy drama series based on his bestselling book This Is Going To Hurt about his time as a junior doctor. The BBC describe the forthcoming show as: “a blisteringly funny, politically enraging and frequently heart-breaking wake-up call to anyone who values the NHS, and a frank and moving love letter to the 1.4m people working on the front line every day". Set on labour ward with all its heart-lifting highs and gut-wrenching lows, the show will deliver a brutally honest depiction of life as a junior doctor on the wards, and the toll the job can take back home.

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Dune by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s ground-breaking 1965 sci-fi novel formed the basis for David Lynch’s 1984 film of the same name, starring Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan. We’ve been waiting for ages for this second reboot – starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac and Jason Momoa – which was due to come out last Christmas. Now, it’s slated to be released on HBO Max in October. Roughly covering the events of the first part of the book (a sequel is already in the works), the film is set in the far future of humanity, on the dangerous desert planet Arrakis, also known as ‘Dune’. Dune is the only source of the most valuable substance in the universe: ‘spice’, a drug which extends human life, provides superhuman levels of thought, and makes faster-than-light travel possible. Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe…

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News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Paul Greengrass has already directed Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips. Now the pair have teamed up for News of the World – based on Paulette Jiles’ National Book Award bestseller – which is released next month. Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks) crosses paths with a 10-year-old girl taken by the Kiowa people. Forced to return to her aunt and uncle, Kidd agrees to escort Johanna across the harsh and unforgiving plains of Texas. However, the long journey soon turns into a fight for survival as the travelling companions encounter danger at every turn – both human and natural. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become – in the eyes of the law – a kidnapper himself.

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Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

In this soon-to-be-released Netflix series, Simona Brown plays Louise, a single mother who has an affair with her psychiatrist boss David (Tom Bateman). Her life takes a strange turn when she later befriends his wife Adele (Eve Hewson), and she finds herself caught in a web of secrets and lies where nothing is what it seems. As she gets to know them both, she begins to see the cracks: is David really the man she thought she knew – and is Adele as vulnerable as she appears? A psychological thriller also starring Robert Aramayo, Behind Her Eyes is produced by Left Bank Pictures, the team behind The Crown, and master of horror Stephen King has described the book as “bloody brilliant.” We’re expecting great things.

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Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

Anatomy of a Scandal centres on a high-profile marriage thrust into the spotlight, a scandal that will rock Westminster and the women caught at the heart of it. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family from the lies which might ruin them. Kate is the barrister who will prosecute the case – she is equally certain that James is guilty and determined he will pay for his crimes. An insightful and suspenseful series about a sexual consent scandal among the British privileged elite, this new Netflix show from Big Little Lies’ David E. Kelley is based on the bestselling book by Sarah Vaughan, and stars Rupert Friend, Sienna Miller and Michelle Dockery. We can’t wait.

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Chasing Hillary by Amy Chozick

Fictional Netflix series Girls on The Bus focuses on four female journalists following a parade of flawed presidential candidates. Inspired by a chapter of Amy Chozick’s bestselling book Chasing Hillary – which saw award-winning New York Times journalist Chozick chronicle Hillary Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency, including her unsuccessful 2008 and 2016 campaigns – the show will centre on the four women who follow every move of an electoral race, finding friendship, love, and a scandal that could take down not just the presidency, but democracy itself, along the way.

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Gone for Good by Harlan Coben

Gone For Good is yet another collaboration between thriller writer Harlan Coben and Netflix, adding to Polish series The Woods, British series The Stranger and upcoming Spanish series El Inocente. Guillaume Lucchesi (Finnegan Oldfield) thought he had drawn a line under the terrible tragedy which saw the two people he loved the most die: Sonia (Garance Marillier), his first love, and Fred (Nicolas Duvauchelle), his brother. Ten years later, Judith (Nailia Harzoune), whose love has made his life worth living again, suddenly disappears during his mother’s funeral. To find her, Guillaume will have to face all the truths that were hidden from him by his family and friends, as well as those that he’d long decided to ignore. If this is anything like Coben’s previous series, we suspect this will be extremely bingeable.

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Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Based on the New York Times bestselling book by Kristin Hannah, Firefly Lane is the sweeping story of two inseparable best friends and their enduring, complicated bond, spanning four tumultuous decades. Starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke, this series will start on Netflix on 3rd February. Beginning in 1974, where the summer of love is finally drawing to a close, the flower children are starting to realise that you cannot survive on peace and love alone. Centred on a moment of betrayal, this coming-of-age novel is about a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by their choices.

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The Last Duel by Eric Jager

In medieval France, a woman claims she's been raped by her husband's best friend, Jean de Carrouges. But when no one believes her accusation, her husband challenges his friend to a duel, the last legally sanctioned duel in the country's history. This historical thriller by Eric Jager is currently being turned into a film by Gladiator’s Ridley Scott. Think this doesn’t sound up your street? The screenplay is written by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Nicole Holofcener, and the cast includes both Damon and Affleck, plus Jodie Comer, Adam Driver and Harriet Walter. Far from a dry history lesson, we imagine this will be another of Scott’s classic, sweeping epics.

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Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

It is Mothering Sunday. How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never-to-be-forgotten day, will her future unfold? Beginning with an intimate assignation, Mothering Sunday is both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. While the upcoming film is still relatively under wraps, we do know that it stars The Crown’s Olivia Colman and Josh O’Connor in another mother-son relationship, plus the likes of Colin Firth and Glenda Jackson. What a cast.

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Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

Blonde is an upcoming biographical drama film written and directed by Andrew Dominik and based on the 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It stars Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson and will land on Netflix later this year. Oates’ book chronicles the fictional inner life of Marilyn Monroe and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Within its pages, readers are given an intimate, unsparing vision of the woman who became Marilyn Monroe: the child who visits the cinema with her mother; the orphan whose mother is declared mad; the woman who changes her name to become an actress; the fated celebrity, lover, comedian muse and icon. Oates tells an epic American story of how a fragile, gifted young woman makes and remakes her identity, surviving against crushing odds, perpetually in conflict and intensely driven.

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