Great Adaptations
Is it any surprise how often you find a great book behind a popular film or tv show? After all a good story is a good story however it’s told. Here are some recent adaptations of books we love. Who does it best is up to you!
Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Brontë
Margot Robbie was wonderful as Barbie, but will she be as good as Catherine Earnshaw? Or is she perhaps a teensy bit old, or a bit not-quite-Kate-Bush-from-1978? You can only decide if she and Jacob Elordi measure up against the Catherine and Heathcliff of your own imagination if you read (or re-read) the book!
Emily Brontë's novel of impossible desires, violence and transgression is a masterpiece of intense, unsettling power. It begins in a snowstorm, when Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him and the bitter vengeance he now wreaks on the innocent heirs of the past.
After Wuthering Heights, why not try Frankenstein, another classic book much filmed, most recently with Jacob Elordi (again, but this time under many layers of prosthetics!) as the creature.
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Hamnet : WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020 - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER
Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Edinburgh-based Maggie O’Farrell won the Women’s Prize for Fiction with Hamnet, published in 2020. And now the film of the book, released in 2026, is winning prizes all over the place!
Why does this story about Shakespeare’s only son strike such a chord? Hamnet is a compelling and deeply insightful depiction of a mother’s love for her children. Fierce maternal devotion – and the aching sense of loss – forms the heart of this book. And like all of Maggie O’Farrell’s books it’s beautifully written.
After Hamnet, why not try The Hand That First Held Mine - the story of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, secrets and motherhood.
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Slow Horses : Slough House Thriller 1
Author: Mick Herron
Welcome to the thrilling and unnervingly prescient world of the slow horses - washed-up MI5 spies who have all disgraced themselves in one way or another - and their irascible, unkempt, cold war-era leader, Jackson Lamb, unforgettably portrayed on TV by Gary Oldman.
Slow Horses is the first of the Slough House thrillers, which have won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, two CWA Daggers, and been published in twenty-five languages. Mick Herron is also the author of the Zoë Boehm series, the first of which, Down Cemetery Road, was recently adapted into a TV series starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson.
If ever there was a both/and rather than an either/or decision to make about reading vs watching, Slow Horses is it!
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The Other Bennet Sister : The Perfect Regency Novel for Fans of Bridgerton and Jane Austen
Author: Janice Hadlow
Coming soon to BBC One, starring Richard E. Grant and Ruth Jones. One by one, the Bennet sisters have found their place. But what happens to the one left behind? The Other Bennet Sister is the brilliant, witty, and heartbreakingly relatable story of Mary Bennet.
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, we know the fates of the five Bennet girls. But while her sisters are celebrated for their beauty or their wit, Mary is the "plain" middle sister. Lonely and lacking connection, Mary turns to the only place she feels safe: her books. But then one fateful day, the life Mary expected is turned upside down. In the face of uncertainty, she slowly discovers that there is hope for the "plain" sister after all. Experience the life-affirming tale of a young woman finally finding her place in the world. This is Mary Bennet's story.
There are so many beloved adaptations of Jane Austen - and Netflix are adapting Pride and Prejudice again in 2026! Maybe in this year of celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, it’s time to return to the source and enjoy the book once more... Whether it's Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, or Emma - you won’t be disappointed!
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The Night Manager
Author: John le Carré
Jonathan Pine, night manager of a luxury Swiss hotel, has a secret. He knows that the guest he awaits, billionaire trader Richard Roper, is ‘the worst man in the world.’ And he knows why. Pine will do whatever it takes to help the Intelligence services bring Roper down – even if it means going deep undercover into a ruthless, lawless world, up against forces more dangerous than he can imagine.
John le Carré virtually created a new school of fiction, not so much spy stories as anti-spy stories, convoluted tales of disillusionment and betrayal. This is what he had to say about the first season of the Night Manager on TV: “they’ve totally changed my book – but it works”.
There are so many wonderful John le Carré books which have become films and/or TV shows - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Call for the Dead to name but two.
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Rachel's Holiday : A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection
Author: Marian Keyes
Arriving on TV in February 2026, The Walsh Sisters is inspired by the novels of celebrated Irish author, Marian Keyes, featuring the chaotic, dysfunctional but deeply loveable Walsh family.
Our favourite book in the series is Rachel’s Holiday, in which Rachel Walsh has to leave behind the fun and freedom of her glamorous life in New York, and slowly come to terms with the fact she’s a drug addict. As ever, Keyes successfully marries heartbreak and hilarity, making this book laugh-out-loud funny, deeply romantic and desperately moving. To quote Nigella Lawson: “Her talent for tackling serious issues with such humanity and wit is balm for the soul”.
Once you’ve enjoyed Rachel’s Holiday you’ll be delighted to know that Marian Keyes has written a sequel, Again Rachel - the story continues!
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H is for Hawk : The Sunday Times bestseller and Costa and Samuel Johnson Prize Winner
Author: Helen Macdonald
In the cinemas from January 2026, H is for Hawk stars Claire Foy as a grieving academic who trains a goshawk in this film based on Helen Macdonald’s nature memoir.
An instant international bestseller and prize-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising a goshawk has soared into the hearts of millions of readers. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human discover the pain and beauty of being alive. H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying masterpiece on grief, memory, taming and un-taming, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.
After H is for Hawk, why not try The Outrun, by Amy Liptrot, which won the 2016 Wainwright prize and the 2017 Ackerley prize, and became a film in 2024, starring Saoirse Ronan.
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The Narrow Road to the Deep North : Discover the Booker prize-winning masterpiece
Author: Richard Flanagan
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
This is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age then prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
Richard Flanagan is an Australian novelist from Tasmania. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which was recently adapted as a TV series starring Jacob Elordi and Ciaran Hinds. In 2024 he won the Baillie Gifford Prize for his memoir, Question 7, making him the first writer in history to win both Britain's major fiction and non-fiction prizes.
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The Seven Dials Mystery
Author: Agatha Christie
Gerry Wade had proved himself to be a champion sleeper; so the other house guests decided to play a practical joke on him. Eight alarm clocks were set to go off, one after the other. But when morning arrived, one clock was missing and the prank had backfired with tragic and murderous consequences. Now the words ‘Seven Dials’ take on a new and chilling significance in this classic golden age detective story by the Queen of Crime, recently adapted for TV.
Agatha Christie also gets a name check in Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Knives Out mystery. Two of her books (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Murder at the Vicarage - the first Miss Marple book!) crop up on the film’s book club reading list, which detective Benoit Blanc says provides “a syllabus of how to commit the perfect crime”.
The other classics on the list are Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers; The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe; and The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr.
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