The 50 books we're dying to see get adapted

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

An artistic little girl slowly going blind in Occupied Paris; an orphaned boy in pre-WWII Germany with a gift for short-wave radio; a priceless diamond dubbed the Sea of Flames. Doerr's sweeping novel captivated readers on its release in 2014 and took home the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Movie rights were promptly snapped up by 20th Century Fox, but it looks like this will be a four-part Netflix miniseries with Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. No word on when it'll air, but we cannot wait to see this story come to life. —Leah Greenblatt

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)

Scott Rudin bought the film rights for the novel before it had even been published, Michael Chabon himself was set to write the script, and, at one point, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire were attached to star. However, a film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book never came to fruition. Given that it's Chabon's crowning achievement, we hope one does eventually. —Esme Douglas

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (2018)

Jones' gorgeous and timely marital drama, about the effects on a Black couple after the husband, Roy, is wrongfully incarcerated, sold like hotcakes after Oprah Winfrey selected it for her Book Club and announced on Twitter she's "working on producing the movie" in 2018. Jones' feel for juicy human drama, not to mention her warm and nuanced sketchings of her characters, make this buzzy title a must for Hollywood's eyes. —David Canfield

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (2008)

Spoiler alert: This book is based on the life of Laura Bush. Sittenfeld was famously inspired by the former First Lady's biography, which became this semi-fictional telling of a Wisconsin grade school teacher who finds herself in the White House and at odds with her liberal upbringing. American Wife's themes of partisan politics and grappling with an inner conscience have never been more prescient. —Seija Rankin

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (2011)

Rumor has it we're getting a TV reboot of The Sandlot on Disney+, but what we really need is an adaption of Harbach's lyrical The Art of Fielding. Good baseball films come by once in a blue moon (sorry, Million Dollar Arm), and Harbach's nuanced, thrilling story could serve as a quality follow-up to the classic 1993 Sandlot (sorry, Sandlot 2). Think "the college years," where Benny "The Jet" Rodriquez goes to school in northeastern Wisconsin and navigates love off the field (and, yeah, takes on the name of Henry Skrimshander). With the book out of an ugly legal battle, now's the time to see The Art of Fielding up close. IMG announced plans for an adaptation in 2017, but there has been radio silence ever since. —Joseph Longo

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)

While The Awakening has technically been adapted—into the 1991 made-for-TV movie Grand Isle, starring Kelly McGillis—that version hardly counts as definitive. And if there were an opportune moment for Kate Chopin's 1899 proto-feminist high-school-English standby to get the lush period piece it deserves (not to mention the Best Actress nomination that would almost certainly follow), it would have to be right now. —Mary Sollosi

Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (2013)

Often considered unfilmable, the books of Thomas Pynchon actually proved to be pretty good adaptation candidates in the hands of Paul Thomas Anderson; the lauded filmmaker's comic-noir take on Inherent Vice led to an Oscar nomination for writing and plenty of rave reviews. Pynchon's got bigger—and better—books in his bibliography, but as to what comes next, we'll suggest Bleeding Edge. It's another mammoth (in length), but it operates in a milieu that'd be fascinating to see rendered visually: a detective story in 9/11-era New York, just as the internet is preparing to change the world. —David Canfield

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (2001)

Gold's historical mystery is so vivid and wild that it's a wonder it hasn't crossed over just yet. Film rights were acquired shortly after it was published to acclaim and commercial success in 2001. For a while, it was stuck in "development hell." However, reports surfaced in 2022, stating that Warner Bros. developed a new script for the adaptation and put Johnny Depp as their leading choice for the stage magician Charles Joseph Carter. —D.C.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)

This cult-classic picaresque novel won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize; Toole's vibrant, expansive take on '60s New Orleans was beloved enough to thrust it into the canon of modern Southern literature. And yet, it has never made it to the screen. That said: The story of how close it got is epic, fascinating, and—for fans of the book—fairly tragic. Rather than summing it up, it's best to read it in full. —D.C.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)

Despite its award-winning pedigree—it won the 2001 National Book Award—The Corrections comes with a lot of baggage: Oprah infamously rescinded her Book Club invitation after Jonathan Franzen criticized the mogul's "schmaltzy" past selections; an HBO adaptation attempt has already come and gone; and Franzen is certainly a much more controversial name than he used to be. But this book, easily the novelist's best, is still a sprawling, ambitious, imaginative work filled with great yet flawed characters who'd translate well to the screen. And if we can't get a fresh adaptation, can we at least finally see what HBO—and Noah Baumbach, Dianne Wiest, Chris Cooper, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ewan McGregor—came up with? —D.C.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)

What more will it take for this best-selling novel to make it to the big screen—or even to cable or streaming? The novel's film rights were sold years ago, a smash theatrical adaptation already won the Tony Award for Best Play, and the West End version was filmed for National Theatre Live, but we're curiously waiting for a big-budget screen adaptation that's accessible to people who didn't get a chance to see the play. This sweet, sad, beloved story of a 15-year-old boy on the autism spectrum investigating the death of a neighbor's dog needs to get out of limbo. There was a very loose Bengali-English adaptation made in 2019, Kia and Cosmos, about a girl on the autism spectrum inquiring about the death of her cat, but we're holding onto hope for the original canine mystery. Our suggestion: Adapt the cathartic play for the screen, cast go-to TV dad Ty Burrell as the single parent, and let's get this thing made. —J.L.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2016)

Are any twentysomething actors out there yearning for an Oscar? Sign them up for this Civil War drama, an expansive and episodic story about a pair of gay American soldiers in the 1850s fighting for their lives and futures. Beyond the obvious coup for cinematic representation that Sebastian Barry's stunning novel presents, the book's protagonists (Thomas McNulty and John Cole) are captivating and introspective creations perfect for onscreen interpretation. What's disarming is how, despite being inextricably of a time, their needs are timeless; as they go from part-time burlesque dancers to dutiful soldiers to accidental domestic settlers, the duo embody the creed that gay people forge their own families—in the Civil War and otherwise. —Marc Snetiker

Death With Interruptions by José Saramago (2008)

José Saramago's touching, thought-provoking meditation on life, loss, and the limbo between those two mortal inevitabilities is one of his most ingenious and idiosyncratic works. Unfilmable? Perhaps. But in the hands of a filmmaker as alive to the intricacies of balancing absurdist philosophy and tender human emotion as Saramago, the novel's genre-defying story could yield a genuinely poetic work of speculative cinema to stand alongside 2006's Children of Men. —Isaac Feldberg

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (2003)

Erik Larson's nonfiction best-seller is one of those true tales delivered so masterfully that it's no less compelling than the finest thriller. Weaving together the lives of the architect behind the great Chicago World's Fair of 1893, and the dastardly serial killer who used the fair as his killing floor, The Devil in the White City offers what every Hollywood screenwriter dreams of stumbling across. We'd heard Martin Scorsese was lined up to direct the adaptation, with Leonardo DiCaprio (who purchased the rights back in 2010) originally playing the serial killer H.H. Holmes before he was bumped to executive producer and replaced by Keanu Reeves (who left the project in October 2022). Months after its director Todd White followed Reeves' departure, it was announced in 2023 that Hulu put the limited series adaptation to rest. However, producer ABC Signature has plans to sell it elsewhere. We'll believe it when we see it. —I.F.

Educated by Tara Westover (2018)

It's likely a matter of when, not if, the biggest memoir of 2018 gets into the development process. Tara Westover's searing, inspiring account of growing up with survivalist parents before graduating from Cambridge University—think The Glass Castle meets Wild—has been a huge best-seller since its publication and continues to find new readers. Let the casting games begin. —D.C.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

Moshfegh wrote one of our favorite books of 2018—My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which Margot Robbie's production company scooped up for optioning—but her previous novel, the Man Booker shortlisted-Eileen, is just as delectable. It mixes elements of suspense, horror, and comedy in its depiction of a woman who works at a juvenile detention center in '60s Massachusetts. And good news: The William Oldroyd-directed film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2023. —D.C.

An Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir (2015–2020)

It seems that the post-Hunger Games glut of YA fantasy/dystopian adaptations is starting to slow down. But we hope that doesn't mean it's the end of the road for Tahir's expansive magical saga, which was acquired before the first book's publication in 2013, but has seemingly been stuck in limbo over the past few years. There are many reasons to reignite the effort to produce this one—every book in the series has hit the Times best-seller list—but chiefly, its representation of Muslim characters and mythologies is unparalleled compared to anything Hollywood has been putting out there. —D.C.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1952)

Few 20th-century writers crafted social comedies as scathingly brilliant as Barbara Pym. Her second novel Excellent Women is her most howlingly funny, centered on a spinster in '50s England as her life bursts wide open when new neighbors (and men) enter her life. Pym's Austen-like ability to instill each character with delightful absurdity makes adaptation a little tricky—a careful balance needs to be struck—but in the hands of someone like Whit Stillman, who did such a good job in Love & Friendship (2016), we could see it working splendidly. —D.C.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)

Barack Obama called it his favorite book of 2015, and being No. 1 on a then-sitting president's fiction list certainly didn't hurt the prospects for Lauren Groff's heady modern meditation on love and obsession, tinged with Greek mythology. But sales and accolades haven't led to a greenlit movie adaptation, at least not yet. (It also hasn't stopped fans from dream-casting the characters: in one online poll, Alexander Skarsgård bested Ryan Gosling for the lead role of conflicted thespian Lotto; Scarlett Johansson, Yvonne Strahovski, and Diane Kruger were all in the imaginary running for Mathilde). —L.G.

The Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelanzny (1970–1991)

Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin have something in common: Both have advocated for Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber fantasy novels to be made into a TV series. Various writers (including Kirkman) have tried to adapt the adult fantasy tale of a warring royal family whose members can jump between parallel worlds. And in January 2023, Stephen Colbert's production company joined Skybound Entertainment and Vincent Newman Entertainment to develop the TV series. —James Hibberd

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (2013)

It's almost too cruel that we were ever even teased with the possibility of a Jane Campion-directed adaptation of Rachel Kushner's 2013 National Book Award finalist, only to have that dream taken away. But if we can't have a majestic big-screen desert motorcycle race, and if we can't have Italian radicals rioting in an enormous, kinetic set piece, then can't we please, at the very least, get a short film of Reno's first night out in New York? —M.S.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (1988)

Imagine The Da Vinci Code, but less ridiculous and a whole lot smarter. That pretty much sums up Italian author Umberto Eco's esoteric (and undeniably cinematic) doorstop-sized conspiracy thriller about the Knights Templar, Jewish mysticism, code-breaking, numerology, the Holy Grail, and an obsessive, high-IQ scavenger hunt that can only result in mayhem. —Chris Nashawaty

The Girls by Emma Cline (2016)

The film world can never have enough cults—at least as far as our fellow cult enthusiasts are concerned. Sure, the story of the Helter Skelter gang—which The Girls is based on—isn't exactly new, and the novel's story went a wee bit off the rails by the end. Still, that is precisely what makes a riveting movie. Hollywood offers a myriad of actresses who are ripe for translating the book's very particular brand of crazy on the big screen. —S.R.

The Forbidden Hearts Trilogy by Alisha Rai (2017–18)

Romance novels are having a bit of a moment in Hollywood, with Shonda Rhimes' wildly popular adaptation of Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series following Sally Thorne's The Hating Game, Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue, and Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us in various stages of development. We'd kill to see Rhimes take a stab at this series next—with its deep bench of diverse characters; its sensitive and emotional handling of issues like depression, PTSD, and self-worth; and its tale of feuding families, it's the stuff primetime soap dreams are made of. The complex, nuanced heroines who grapple with serious demons are more of what we need on television, and they share DNA with the likes of Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) and Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo). Not to mention Rai's smoldering heroes will make you forget McDreamy ever existed. —Maureen Lee Lenker

The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter (2006–2013)

One night, while watching an episode of Alias, Ally Carter mistakenly thought she was watching a show about a girl in spy school. While she ended up being incorrect, it spawned the idea for the first Gallagher Girls book, and six books later, it's safe to say it paid off. The series follows Cammie and her friends through the halls of Gallagher Academy, an all-girls spy school. As they train for their futures as spies, the girls complete missions (and even join forces with the top secret all-boys spy school in book two). With action, romance, and angsty drama, this series is begging to be turned into a frothy teen drama. Carter's website says a series is in development—but that's been the case for over a decade. —Aja Hoggatt

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (2017)

One of the funniest books of the 2010s offers a familiar story of a woman's disillusioned return home to her parents, only for things to turn delightfully unhinged. Khong writes with profound empathy, and with humor that's always sharp but never cruel. Her voice feels like a natural fit for an intimate HBO half-hour. In 2019, Variety reported that Constance Wu would star in a film from Universal Pictures, but there has been no update since. —D.C.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (2010)

Even though Game of Thrones is distinctly different from The Lord of the Rings in its prolific sex and willingness to kill off major characters, the two most famous fantasy stories of the last 100 years both feature the same kind of medieval European setting. You'd be forgiven for thinking that fantasy stories could only look this one way, but in fact, the opposite is true. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy is a great example of fantasy that posits a radically different imaginary world: one where people come in all shapes and colors, and all of creation is ruled by a trio of brother-sister gods. At least, it used to be; when the story starts, the world has gone terribly wrong, and now one god rules above all others. Many fantasy stories end with a simple restoration of monarchy or reversal to the status quo, but Jemisin's characters instead seek to radically change their world for the better. Their primary weapon in doing so is not violence but sex—good, fulfilling, universe-shaking god sex. Any ambitious producers looking to shake up the fantasy landscape would do well to tackle her work, which might be why the Smiths (Will and Jada Pinkett) and their production company (Westbrook Studios) are attached to the series being developed by Searchlight Television. —Christian Holub

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer (2013)

The year 2018 marked a bit of a breakthrough year for Wolitzer, between the Glenn Close-led adaptation of her early novel The Wife and the huge success of her book, The Female Persuasion (which Nicole Kidman has been developing with Amazon Studios). So it seems like a good time for the author's best novel—an epic and wise tale that follows the lives of friends who meet at an art camp—to get the screen treatment it deserves. An Amazon pilot starring Tony nominee (and Six Feet Under alum) Lauren Ambrose was produced in 2016 but, unfortunately, didn't make it to the series. —D.C.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2005)

This metaphysical fable might struggle if producers attempt to Americanize Haruki Murakami's surreally mythic masterwork, Death Note-style. But a sumptuous anime adaptation of one of this century's most beguiling works of narrative fiction? Oh, absolutely. Such an approach would ensure painstaking detail is paid to visualizing Murakami's rich vision of lost cats, spirit worlds, and falling fish. —I.F.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)

Black Panther wowed audiences not just for its big-budget spectacle and A-list cast, but for the way it wove science-fiction and superhero tropes into the context of the global Black experience. Octavia E. Butler is basically the godmother of such work, and her novel Kindred makes for an excellent adaptation, especially at a time when racism and racial justice are at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. Like 12 Years a Slave (2013) by way of The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), Kindred tells the story of Dana, a 20th-century African American writer who keeps getting pulled back in time to the pre-Civil War Maryland plantation where her ancestors were enslaved. When she first arrives, Dana saves the life of a young white boy named Rufus, who is grateful for her help. But, over the course of multiple time trips, Rufus grows older and Southern society corrupts him into a plantation master who treats Dana just like any other enslaved person. By comparing modern and antebellum Americas so vividly, Kindred has a lot of thought-provoking things to say about the legacy of slavery and the changing nature of interracial relationships. The book was adapted into graphic novel form by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, which showcased the story's power and openness to adaptation. In January 2022, FX ordered an eight-episode series based on Butler's novel. It was released at the end of the year but has since been canceled after its first season. —C.H.

Kringle by Tony Abbott (2005)

This 2005 fantasy epic—from Secrets of Droon author Tony Abbott—gave Santa Claus a rip-roaring origin story, replete with child-stealing goblins, runic prophecies, flying reindeer, and a gallant orphan determined to bring joy back to the world. Paramount and Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura optioned film rights back in 2007, setting Chicken Little's Mark Dindal to co-write and direct; the project's currently in limbo after the studio let its option lapse, but one imagines family audiences would eagerly flock to theaters (especially around the holidays) for an imaginative, high-flying adventure story like this, set in a richly drawn world evocative of Narnia and Middle-Earth. —I.F.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)

Ursula K. Le Guin passed away in 2018, but she left behind a voluminous body of literary works that remain just as inspiring and groundbreaking as when she first wrote them. Embarrassingly, for a cultural period in which the biggest TV shows and movies are fantasy and science-fiction adventures, very little of Le Guin's work has been adapted for the screen, and the less said about the few attempts (such as SyFy's disastrous Earthsea miniseries), the better. There seems to be no better way to make up for this failure than for someone to adapt her best novel, the story of a man who travels to a distant planet and learns that forces like gender and weather are not quite as natural or constant as commonly supposed. On the icy planet Gethen, humans have evolved in such a way as to be asexual most of the time, only sprouting genitals once a month in reaction to a partner—meaning that there are Gethenians who have both mothered and fathered different children with different partners. The envoy Genly Ai's journey to understand people so radically different from him brings him up against topics — sexual spectrums, mutual understanding, and even authoritarian politics — that seem to be more and more on people's minds every day. —C.H.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)

Less—the story of a stalled writer jet-setting to finish a manuscript and flee his ex—is an opportunity for Hollywood to boost representation of the LGBTQ+ community, with a story focused on neither the beginning nor the end of gay life. Greer's novel fills in the gaps between Love, Simon (2018) and Beginners (2010), showing the reality (and pitfalls) of modern white gay male entitlement. With illustrious destinations, witty writing, and overwrought love stories, Less deserves the chance to emerge as the queer version of Eat Pray Love. —J.L.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (2013)

We're not saying Atkinson's tricky, brilliant 2013 bestseller—about an otherwise-ordinary girl who seems, whether she likes it or not, unable to die—would be easy to translate onscreen. But the novel, with its high-wire literary concept and historical set pieces (the London Blitz, the Spanish flu, Hitler's bucolic Bavarian Alps retreat), could be catnip to the right combination of screenwriter and director. As Atkinson is a British author, it's fitting that the BBC produced a four-part series adaptation that aired in the spring of 2022. —L.G.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

One word: tearjerker. Two more words: Oscar bait. The epic is tailor-made for a December indie release—even though a stage adaptation is already in the works, with James Norton starring as its protagonist Jude—centering around four friends who meet in college and go on to collectively experience practically every type of success and heartbreak ever known. You thought you sobbed during Manchester by the Sea (2016)? Well, just wait until Jude gets his hands on your psyche with his childhood trauma and midlife crises. —S.R.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

Even people who don't read much are familiar with the magnificent power of Russian literature; novels like Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment have been adapted for the English-speaking screen many times over. But Russian literature did not end in the 19th century, and its 20th-century offerings include some of the zaniest, most colorful stories ever put to paper. The Master and Margarita opens with two men on a park bench debating the existence of the devil in the officially atheist Soviet Union and goes on to feature demonic orgies, a retelling of Christ's crucifixion from Pontius Pilate's point of view, women taking magical revenge on their bureaucratic oppressors, and one sarcastic, vodka-swilling, chess-playing black cat named Behemoth. Just try and find a more entertaining story. (Yes, there have been non-English adaptations over the years, but Baz Lurhmann now has the rights to this novel and we are aching to see what he does with it.) —C.H.

The Mediator series by Meg Cabot (2000–2016)

Meg Cabot's series, which tells the story of Suze Simon, a teenage girl with the power to see and speak to ghosts, has been optioned multiple times to no avail. Each book in the seven volumes follows a self-contained mystery that Suze uses her mediator powers to help solve and send lingering spirits to their peaceful rest. But the real seller here is the overarching narrative of Jesse, the smoking hot ghost who lives in her bedroom. Suze yearns to help him resolve his unfinished business, even if that means risking losing him to the afterlife. A whip-smart YA series with the DNA of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the angst of Riverdale, the Mediator series could provide rich inspiration for the screen, which Netflix has secured the rights to, but has given no further updates. —M.L.L.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

Godspeed to the screenwriter who dares to take on this hefty story, but we feel confident that the payoff would be far greater than the challenges. It's an epic in every sense of the word, following a family from their Greek island roots to their escape during an island-wide rampage, and finally to their new life in prohibition-era suburban Detroit. It's all told from the current day by narrator Cal, who is attempting to understand why they transitioned from their birth identity of Calliope. We warn that it's not the easiest adaptation, but such a staple of American literature deserves a spot on the screen, and thankfully, Paramount Studios snagged the rights to a TV adaptation, with Fifty Shades of Grey's Sam Taylor-Johnson set to direct. —S.R.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (1961)

In what would have been a truly perfect pairing of filmmaker and material, Terrence Malick was once working on an adaptation of Walker Percy's 1961 debut. But even if Malick's inevitably exquisite take on the National Book Award winner wasn't meant to be, someone ought to translate Binx Bolling's existential quest for meaning, set against the rich backdrop of midcentury New Orleans during Mardi Gras, into a lyrical art-house feature. —M.S.

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton (2018)

We're hoping the fact that Reese Witherspoon chose this novel for her Hello Sunshine book club means she's seriously considering optioning it. The book flips between two heroines—Elisa Perez in 1958, a wealthy sugar heiress living on the precipice of revolution in Cuba, and her granddaughter Marisol in the present day as she travels to Havana to spread her grandmother's ashes, uncovering family secrets in the process. Both women encounter forbidden romance while grappling with what it means to be Cuban in a novel that explores everything from national identity to the challenges of choosing between what is easy and what is right. Hollywood needs more stories that champion women's voices this way—and Cleeton's lush, multigenerational tale is so inherently cinematic we swoon just thinking about what it might look like. —M.L.L.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

The magical realist elements of the novel have made it largely considered unadaptable, and Márquez never sold the film rights. When director Giuseppe Tornatore tried to buy the rights the author reportedly told him he would sell them if they "film the entire book, but only release one chapter—two minutes long—each year, for 100 years." Practicality aside, we're pretty curious to see what that'd look like. We're even more curious to see the series Netflix is adapting—which is only happening because it'll be shot in Spanish and executive produced by Marquez's sons Rodrigo Garcia and Gonzalo García Barcha. We just hope we won't have to wait years to see it, let alone 100.—E.D.

Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II by Ben Macintyre (2010)

At the height of World War II, two British intelligence officers hatched an audacious scheme to fool the Nazis with the help of falsified government documents and one unwittingly patriotic dead guy. Ben Macintyre's absurdly entertaining account of this unlikely feat of espionage—credited with assuring an Allied victory—provides much more detail than was publicly known when the operation formed the basis of 1956's The Man Who Never Was. Lucky for us, John Madden directed a film version of this that aired on Netflix in April 2022 (starring not one, but two Mr. Darcys—Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen). —I.F.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (2000)

Many modern fantasy stories look to J.R.R. Tolkien as their North Star, but for China Miéville, it's H.P. Lovecraft. As a result, his fantasy world of Bas-Lag is dark, dirty, cramped, and full of monsters, as magical creatures live side-by-side with steampunk technology. Nothing is normal in the city of New Crobuzon, which sits under the gigantic rib bones of some long-dead primordial beast. The book's main characters include an artist with a scarab for a head and a disgraced half-bird man who comes to the city seeking to get his flight restored. A scientist's attempt to help him with this ends up unleashing a species of dream-eating nightmare moths on the city, and things only get more unbelievable from there. This book and the others in Miéville's Bas-Lag trilogy form an impressive response to anyone who thinks modern stories have run out of ideas. —C.H.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown (2014)

Universal reportedly purchased the rights to Pierce Brown's sci-fi epic just a month after the 2014 release of the first book in Brown's trilogy, which imagines an interplanetary color-caste society in which a low-born Red miner from Mars seeks revenge on the aristocracy by infiltrating the high-born Gold knights who destroyed his family. Blending the futuristic opulence of Star Wars with the traditions of Roman mythology, Brown's series is a daunting screen adaptation, to be sure (which could explain the scarcity of development news since 2014, besides this Tweet from Brown in 2021) but rest assured, studio suits: The space opera's frequent, cinematic action sequences are destined to dazzle summer audiences someday, somewhere, be it on a small screen or one as wide as Brown's saga. —M.S.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (2011)

Jesmyn Ward, the only woman to have won the National Book Award twice, broke out with this astonishing novel about a Mississippi family preparing for — and then reeling from — Hurricane Katrina. Ward has a unique ability to meld naturalistic dialogue and interpersonal drama with Faulkner-esque Southern Gothic. A filmmaker of similar strengths, like Ava DuVernay (hey, we can dream), could approach the material with vision and power. —D.C.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

The Goldfinch already received the Hollywood treatment with mixed results (starring the likes of Nicole Kidman, Ansel Elgort, and Sarah Paulson). Still, Donna Tartt's fans will be quick to say that The Secret History is her most engrossing novel. It follows a group of students at a prestigious New England college who set out to create a Roman-style Bacchanal on campus (yes, it's pretentious, but trust that it's beyond entertaining) and quickly devolves into murder-y scenarios. It's that perfect blend of high-end art and low-end drama that is so popular on our screens. —S.R.

The Selection series by Kiera Cass (2012–2016)

Described as The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games, The Selection and its sequels take place in the dystopian society of Illéa, where citizens are divided into castes (Eights being at the top, and Ones being at the bottom). When it's time for the Prince of Illéa, Prince Maxon, to get married, 35 girls are chosen to compete for his heart and the chance to live a better life. But for protagonist America Singer, it means leaving behind her secret lover Aspen, who's a caste below her. Once she's chosen, she finds herself swept away by a life—and a man—she never knew she wanted.

The CW attempted to adapt the popular book series twice with two different casts, once in 2012 and again in 2013, but neither pilot was picked up. In 2020, Netflix announced an adaptation of the first book with Haifaa Al-Mansour set to direct, but it's still in the pre-production stage. With 5 books and 4 novellas within it, The Selection series has plenty of stories to tell. —A.H.

Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (1869)

Gustave Flaubert's 1869 tale of young adulthood in 1848 revolutionary Paris may be cynical and overly ironic, but couldn't we say the same of the present day? Either way, if the cast of Vanderpump Rules is going to be awarded many seasons on Bravo, then Flaubert's maddening but hysterical company of cheaters, fighters, liars, dilettantes, courtesans, social climbers, manipulators, and pretenders deserve just as much, if not double. —M.S.

The Silo series by Hugh Howey (2011–2013)

Back in 2012, Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian snapped up the film rights, but Howey's sprawling tale—about a post-apocalyptic future where the air is too contaminated to breathe and humanity must live in an underground city called the Silo—was always far more suited to episodic storytelling. Fortunately, it now may finally get the TV treatment: On July 30, 2018, AMC announced it was developing a drama based on the first book in Howey's series, Wool. Since, the streaming series (starring Rebecca Ferguson) has been moved over to Apple TV+, with a release date of May 5, 2023. —Kristen Baldwin

Tigerman by Nick Harkaway (2014)

This is the era of the superhero movie. Why hasn't Nick Harkaway's dazzlingly imaginative 2014 novel—about a British war vet who befriends a comic book-obsessed orphan and styles himself as the made-up hero of the title while stationed in a corrupt former colony on the brink of environmental destruction, if you can imagine—been adapted into one seriously wild ride of a movie? —M.S.