Our Favorite Book-to-Screen Adaptations

When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details, namely that his childhood home looks like a palace, and he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor. On Nick’s arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.

In this honest and stunning novel that inspired the award-winning major motion picture, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Nineteen-year-olds Tish and Fonny have just pledged to get married when Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, as they face his uncertain future. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her marriage was soon destroyed. With nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. Driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Brought to life on the screen by Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—town golden boy, Nick, parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

Including the story “Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award-nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author examines the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregory Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Now a major motion picture starring Felicity Jones, Shailene Woodley, Callum Turner, Nabhaan Rizwan, and Joe Alwyn, The Last Letter from Your Lover is a spellbinding, page-turning, intoxicating double love story spanning forty years.

Starring Abigail Cowen and Tom Lewis, Redeeming Love is a life-changing story of God’s unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love. California’s gold country is a place where men sold their souls for a bag of gold and women sold their bodies for a place to sleep. Angel, sold into prostitution as a child, expects nothing from men but betrayal. Until she meets Michael Hosea, a man who obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. But even though her frozen heart begins to thaw, Angel soon learns her final healing must come from the One who will never let her go.

First it was a media sensation. Then it became the #1 international bestseller. Now it is a major motion picture starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara, and was nominated for six Academy Awards! It is the miraculous and triumphant story of Saroo Brierley, a young man who used Google Earth to rediscover his childhood life and home in an incredible journey from India to Australia and back again…

In this incredibly true story of survival and salvation, we follow Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, Louis was a delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, which ultimately carried him to the Berlin Olympics. Then with the start of WWII, he became an airman. When his Air Force bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived. But his willpower faced the ultimate test upon his heroic return home after the war when he grappled with PTSD. Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by author Laura Hillenbrand, and director Angelina Jolie.