PHOENIX — Who doesn’t love a good book-to-movie adaptation?
Whether you are firmly in camp “the book was better” or often pick up a new title based on your watch history, books hitting the big screen are having their moment.
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If you’re having ‘Off-Campus’ withdrawal or are simply looking for a new book to binge, here are a few options for every reader.
For the thrill chaser: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Freida McFadden is the queen of thrillers. Twists, turns, mysteries that make you think you know whodunnit until you know you definitely don’t—McFadden’s books have it all.
The Housemaid is no exception. The psychological thriller follows Millie Calloway, a young woman with a troubled past who comes to work for the wealthy Winchester family. As she starts her job cleaning the family’s beautiful home, collecting their daughter Cecelia from school and enduring Nina Winchester’s mood swings, she realizes this family may only look perfect from the outside.
But who is really at fault for what is happening behind closed doors?
The highly anticipated movie adaptation came out in 2025, starring Sydney Sweeney as Millie and Amanda Seyfried as Nina Winchester. The movie became a $300 million box office success, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
You can now watch The Housemaid on streaming platforms and check out the book from your library, or wherever books are sold.
For the mystery lover: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Five books, four retirees and countless tricks up their sleeves, the Thursday Murder Club series is perfect for the reader looking for a cozy mystery and quirky characters.
The first book in the series, written by Richard Osman, came out in 2020 and follows Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, a group of retired friends who meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. Everyone needs a hobby, right?
But when a real-life killing happens in their retirement village, the unlikely sleuths need to catch the killer before it’s too late.
The Netflix movie based on the books came out in 2025 and has a star-studded cast: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie play the four sleuths, and popular actors such as David Tennant show up on screen, too.
You can watch The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix and check out the book from your library, or wherever books are sold.
For the sci-fi super fan: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Andy Weir has written some of readers’ favorite science fiction titles, like The Martian and Artemis. And Project Hail Mary is right up there with the rest of them.
The book, published originally in 2021 and rereleased in 2025, follows Ryland Gracie, the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission, where failure is not an option. If only he could remember why.
Suddenly awake after a long sleep, Ryland can’t even remember his own name, let alone what he’s doing with two corpses for company in a tiny spaceship millions of miles from home. Whether he knows his name or not, he does know this: He has to figure out a seemingly impossible scientific mystery and conquer an extinction-level threat to mankind all on his own.
Or does he?
The movie, starring Ryan Gosling, came out in 2026 and has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon got its “biggest movie hit ever” with Project Hail Mary. The film opened with $80.5 million in the US and Canada.
You can watch Project Hail Mary on Amazon and check out the book from your library, or wherever books are sold.
For fans of romance, the messier the better: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
One of the best beach reads of recent years, most romance readers know about People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry.
Henry’s sophomore adult romance follows Alex and Poppy, two people who form an unlikely friendship after driving home from college together one summer. The pair promise that no matter what, every year, they will meet somewhere in the world for a vacation. But two years ago, they ruined everything, and they haven’t spoken since.
When Poppy is asked when she last felt truly happy, she realizes that the answer is when she was last with Alex on one of their adventures, and she knows she has to fix their friendship. She proposes one last vacation, and miraculously, Alex agrees. What follows is a story where readers get a glimpse into the past that built this epic friendship and the present that threatens to tear them apart once again, and the future neither one of them is brave enough to admit just yet.
The book-to-movie adaptation hit the silver screen in January of 2026, starring Emily Bader as Poppy and Tom Blyth as Alex. It’s Henry’s first book-to-film adaptation, but it isn’t the last: Netflix is developing both Happy Place and Funny Story into films, too.
You can watch People We Meet on Vacation on Netflix and check out the book from your library, or wherever books are sold.
For people planning their next book-to-TV series release party: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
If you love hosting release parties or want to watch a new series with friends, The God of the Woods may just be your next read to get ready for the soiree (and show) of the year.
The mystery-thriller by Liz Moore, published in 2024, is about the disappearance of Barbara Van Laar. The young girl went missing from a wealthy family’s Adirondack summer camp in 1975, and it is eerily similar to another disappearance years earlier: that of Barbara’s older brother, who vanished fourteen years ago and has never been found.
The story spans from the 1950s to the 1970s and digs into the secrets of the Van Laar family. Is there more than meets the eye when it comes to this seemingly perfect family and their idyllic summer camp? Or is there something sinister lurking in the woods?
Netflix greenlit a TV series based on the bestselling novel that is set to star Maya Hawke as Judy Luptack, the first female investigator in the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, who is assigned to investigate Barbara’s disappearance, alongside Kerry Condon, who is playing Alix Van Laar, Barbara’s mom and the matriarch of the Van Laar family.
While there isn’t a release date yet for the series, that hasn’t stopped speculation and buzz from fans.
Still looking for more? Here are titles on the big screen already, or coming soon to a TV near you
If you’ve already read all of the books above, don’t worry, there are plenty more.
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, chances are you’ve heard of Heated Rivalry. The second book in the popular series, The Game Changers series by Rachel Reid, was adapted for TV in 2026 and is available on Hulu and HBO Max.
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And if you are counting down the days until season two, never fear: There are five additional books in the series, ready to binge!
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
This historical fiction novel came out in 2020 and reimagines William Shakespeare’s family. Five years later, the movie adaptation was released, starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway, Paul Mescal as the Bard, and Noah Jupe as Hamnet, the playwright and his wife’s son who died of the plague.
The movie focuses on Agnes’ story and won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Buckley’s role.
Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
A Reese’s Book Club pick in 2019, Daisy Jones & The Six follows Daisy Jones, a girl coming of age in L.A. in the 1960s. She’s sneaking into clubs, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of one day singing on the big stage. When she and Billy Dunne, the leader of the band ‘The Six,” get noticed by a producer who thinks the key to success is by putting them together, what happens next is the stuff of legend.
The novel is written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the 70s, and the TV series adaptation is #8 in romance TV shows on Amazon Prime.
The TV series stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin and has ten bingeable episodes for your viewing pleasure.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
If you loved reading or watching The Handmaid’s Tale, get ready for the sequel. Published in 2019, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments is set about 15 years after the first book, and explores what has come in the Gilead regime through the perspectives of three very different young women.
The novel is a Booker Prize winner, and the TV series, produced by Hulu, hit the screen in 2026. It stars Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday and Mabel Li, and has ten episodes in the first season.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
The bestselling debut by Shelby Van Pelt captures the beauty of life, loss and connection through the eyes of a 70-year-old widow and a giant Pacific octopus.
Remarkably Bright Creatures hit shelves in 2022 and was adapted by Netflix, coming out as a feature film in 2026, starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman.
The Bodyguard by Katherine Center
Now this next one is not your typical adaptation. Rather than bringing the book to the screen, the upcoming Netflix holiday film Guarding Stars is based off of bestselling Katherine Center’s novel, The Bodyguard.
The novel follows Hannah Brooks, an executive protection agent who looks more like a kindergarten teacher than she does a woman who could kill you with any number of household objects, who is assigned to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton. But sparks fly and chaos ensues when Jack asks Hannah to pose as his girlfriend rather than his bodyguard, so his family won’t know that his life is in danger.
Leighton Meester and Jared Padalecki will be headlining the movie, according to Netflix. There isn’t yet a release date, but with the movie being set over the holidays, news may be coming on that front soon!
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Another bestselling debut turned into a hit TV show, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, is about Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist in 1960s California, attempting to navigate the boys’ club environment she often finds herself in. After tragedy strikes, Elizabeth finds herself as the reluctant host of a TV cooking show.
But she refuses to “just cook,” instead educating her female-dominated audience in science and empowerment alongside the delicious recipes she brings to the screen.
The Apple TV+ is a drama miniseries starring Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott. It has eight episodes.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
This may be *the* book-to-TV-series adaptation of the summer. Carley Fortune is the queen of romance filled with family drama, secrets, and steamy summer scenes, and Every Summer After is no exception.
The bestselling debut novel came out in 2022 and follows Persephone Fraser and Sam Florek. Percy and Sam spent summers at Barry’s Bay, their best friendship slowly turning into something more before one moment left them reeling, and Percy unable to come home—until now.
When Percy goes back to Barry’s Bay for Sam’s mom’s funeral, the pair are forced to reckon with their pasts and acknowledge that their connection is still just as strong in the present before they even think about what a future together could look like.
The highly anticipated Amazon Prime original series, named Every Year After, hits screens on June 10.
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