Books Made into Movies

Published in 1965, John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night is a crime novel set in Wells, South Carolina. The story focuses on the police department’s numerous struggles to solve a recent murder. Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective from Pasadena, California, lends a helping hand, but his interactions with the locals reveal the deep-seated racism of Wells. Through this murder mystery, the novel addresses issues of systemic racism and offers hope for a better... Read In the Heat of the Night Summary

Jurassic Park is a science-fiction thriller novel written by American author Michael Crichton and first published in 1990. It chronicles the story of an eccentric genetics CEO who builds an amusement park containing live dinosaurs cloned from ancient DNA. The book was followed by a sequel in 1995, The Lost World. Jurassic Park has been adapted into one of the most successful movie franchises of all time, with the first movie released in 1993 and... Read Jurassic Park Summary

Landscape with Invisible Hand is a satirical dystopian science fiction novel by M. T. Anderson, written for a young adult audience. A diverse author, Anderson writes both fiction and nonfiction for people of all ages. In 2023, Landscape with Invisible Hand was adapted for film, reflecting the novel’s popularity and relevance. The book depicts a future world in which an alien species, the vuvv, have sold their technology to humans, causing the collapse of the... Read Landscape with Invisible Hand Summary

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel and Booker Prize winner published in 2001. Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 to French-Canadian parents but spent his childhood in various countries including Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada. Martel’s father was a diplomat who completed his PhD dissertation on Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno at the University of Salamanca. Yann Martel studied philosophy at Trent University in Canada before becoming a... Read Life of Pi Summary

Like Water for Chocolate is the debut novel of Laura Esquivel, published in Mexico in 1989 and then translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. Esquivel has sold over four million copies of the novel worldwide. She is a novelist and active politician serving in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. She collaborated with her husband at the time to adapt the novel into a film in 1992, which was then nominated for a Golden... Read Like Water for Chocolate Summary

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, originally published in two volumes in 1868, is set in New England and inspired by her own family and life events. It is a coming-of-age domestic novel about four sisters who grow up during the American Civil War. Due to its popularity, Alcott wrote two sequels: Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886). The novel has been adapted many times for the screen, including the 1994 film for which Winona Ryder... Read Little Women Summary

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Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays. Classified as a tragedy and thought to be performed for the first time in 1606, it tells the story of a Scottish nobleman who becomes obsessed with power and is driven mad by guilt.Plot SummaryThe play opens with three witches, who make plans to meet again. In a military camp, King Duncan of Scotland hears the news of his generals’ success. Macbeth and Banquo have defeated... Read Macbeth Summary

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London. Known for his stories of adventure and use of naturalism and realism, London authored more than 50 books, including Call of the Wild and White Fang, before his untimely death at age 40. London wrote Martin Eden at the height of his literary career, inspired by his own disillusionment with fame and literary critics. Although the protagonist’s individualist principles are at odds with London’s... Read Martin Eden Summary

Maurice (1971) is a coming-of-age novel and love story by English author E. M. Forster. Like much of Forster’s work, it straddles the realist and modernist eras; stylistically, it resembles the literature of the 19th century, but its themes—in particular, its depiction of unconscious experience—anticipate the work of writers like Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Drafted between 1913 and 1914, it was not published until 1971—one year after Forster’s death—because of its subject matter;... Read Maurice Summary

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes chronicles the burgeoning romance between Will Traynor, a quadriplegic man, and Louisa Clark, his caregiver. Published in 2012, Me Before You is the first novel in Moyes’s trilogy and is followed by After You (2015) and Still Me (2018). The novel was adapted into a 2016 film starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin. Written from various perspectives, Me Before You explores the complexities of disability, love, and euthanasia.This guide... Read Me Before You Summary

Men of Iron is an 1891 young adult novel written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. Pyle was born in Delaware in 1853, and after years of training—beginning with a childhood passion for art—he taught illustration at Drexel University before establishing his own institute, the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. His style of art, which he himself was instrumental in developing, was named the Brandywine School after the mid-Atlantic region from which the artists in... Read Men of Iron Summary

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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis published in 2003 by W. W. Norton. Lewis holds a master’s degree in economics and made his writing debut with the acclaimed Liar’s Poker (1989), based on his experience working for the investment bank Salomon Brothers. This background prepared him for Moneyball, a book about how statistics is applied to baseball in a method known as sabermetrics. A movie adaptation... Read Moneyball Summary

First published as a play in 2001, the novella Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran is part of Franco-Belgian author Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Cycle of the Invisible series consisting of unrelated stories on the themes of human connection, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and spirituality. Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran has been performed on the stage and was adapted for the screen in 2003. This study guide refers to Marjolijn... Read Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran Summary

Much Ado About Nothing, a comedy dating from the mid-career period of William Shakespeare was probably written just prior to 1600. The play has the trappings of a theatrical farce with its use of assumptions and misunderstandings. Main characters Benedick and Beatrice are duped into announcing their love for each other while Claudio is fooled into spurning Hero at the altar when he mistakenly believes that she has not been faithful to him. The theme of lovers being tricked... Read Much Ado About Nothing Summary

Mudbound is a 2008 novel by author Hillary Jordan. It is set in the southern delta of Mississippi in the years immediately following World War II. Over the course of the story, the fates of two intertwined families are irreversibly changed by a tragedy provoked by virulent racism. The novel explores themes of love, family, loyalty, duty, and the uneasy relationship African Americans have had with the South in the years following emancipation. As the... Read Mudbound Summary

Murder on the Orient Express, first published in 1934, is a mystery by Agatha Christie featuring one of her most famous characters, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. A locked-room mystery, the novel unfolds in a train, the Orient Express, which has become stranded in a snowstorm. Poirot happens to be on the train when a man named Mr. Ratchett is murdered. Poirot is called upon to solve the case, and the book follows his investigation... Read Murder on the Orient Express Summary

My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel/memoir by American cartoonist and writer Derf Backderf, known for utilizing darkness and shading in his comic strips and graphic novels. Evolving from a 24-page cartoon created in 2002, My Friend Dahmer (2012) depicts the author’s memories of his high school friend, notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, in novelistic form—exploring the ways Dahmer himself could have been helped and his 17 murders prevented. The graphic novel was adapted into... Read My Friend Dahmer Summary