Books to Film – May 2021

Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Movie: Monster
When it comes out: May 7
What the book is about: Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. A Harlem drugstore owner was shot and killed in his store, and the word is that Steve served as the lookout. Guilty or innocent, Steve becomes a pawn in the hands of “the system,” cluttered with cynical authority figures and unscrupulous inmates, who will turn in anyone to shorten their own sentences. For the first time, Steve is forced to think about who he is as he faces prison, where he may spend all the tomorrows of his life. As a way of coping with the horrific events that entangle him, Steve, an amateur filmmaker, decides to transcribe his trial into a script, just like in the movies.

Above Suspicion by Joe Sharkey
Movie: Above Suspicion
When it comes out: May 14
What the book is about: When rookie FBI agent Mark Putnam received his first assignment in 1987, it was the culmination of a lifelong dream, if not the most desirable location. Pikeville, Kentucky, is high in Appalachian coal country, an outpost rife with lawlessness dating back to the Hatfields and McCoys. As a rising star in the bureau, however, Putnam soon was cultivating paid informants and busting drug rings and bank robbers. But when one informant fell in love with him, passion and duty would collide with tragic results.

In the Skin of a Jihadist by Anna Erelle
Movie: Profile
When it comes out: May 14
What the book is about: Anna Erelle is the undercover journalist behind “Melodie”. Created to investigate the powerful propaganda weapons of Islamic State, “Melodie” is soon sucked in by Bilel, right-hand man of the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi for whose capture the US government has promised $10 million, al-Baghdadi is described by Time Magazine as the most dangerous man in the world and by himself as the caliph of Islamic State. Bilel shows off his jeep, his guns, his expensive watch. He boasts about the people he has just killed. Enticed into this lethal online world like hundreds of other young people, Erelle’s harrowing and gripping investigation helps us to understand the true face of terrorism.

There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones
Movie: Finding You
When it comes out: May 14
What the book is about:

Talented music student, Finley Sinclair, decides to study abroad in Ireland to bring her closer to her recently deceased older brother. Beckett Rush, teen heartthrob and Hollywood bad boy, is flying to Ireland to finish filming his latest vampire movie. On the flight, he meets Finley. She’s the one girl who seems immune to his charm. Undeterred, Beckett convinces her to be his assistant in exchange for his help as a tour guide. Once in Ireland, Finley starts to break down. The loss of her brother and the pressure of school, her music audition, and whatever it is that is happening between her and Beckett, leads her to a new and dangerous vice. When is God going to show up for her in this emerald paradise?

Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta
Movie: Those Who Wish Me Dead
When it comes out: May 14
What the book is about: When fourteen-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he’s plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare. The killers will do anything to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.

The Dry by Jane Harper
Movie: The Dry
When it comes out: May 21
What the book is about: In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain.
Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier. But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Falk thought was long buried. A secret Luke’s death now threatens to bring to the surface in this small Australian town, as old wounds bleed into new ones.

Books to Film – April 2021

Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri
Movie: Concrete Cowboy
When it comes out: April 2
What the book is about: Twelve-year-old Cole’s behavior causes his mother to drive him from Detroit to Philadelphia to live with a father he has never known, but who soon has Cole involved with a group of African-American “cowboys” who rescue horses and use them to steer youths away from drugs and gangs.

French Exit by Patrick deWitt
Movie: French Exit
When it comes out: April 2
What the book is about: Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Prices’ aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

Shrine by James Herbert
Movie: The Unholy
When it comes out: April 2
What the book is about: Alice, a deaf-mute, has a vision of a lady in white who says she is the immaculate conception. Suddenly Alice can speak, hear, and perform miracles. The visitation site becomes a shrine. But Alice is no longer the guileless child overwhelmed by her new saintliness. She has become the agent of something corrupt, a vile force centuries old.

Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe
Movie: Moffie
When it comes out: April 9
What the book is about: At the age of 19 he is conscripted into the South African army and finds his every sensibility offended by a system close to its demise, and yet still in full force. Moffie transports the reader into this young man’s world with evocative realism – sometimes heart-rending, sometimes with humour, always with brush strokes of hope.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba by Koyoharu Gotouge
Movie: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train
When it comes out: April 23
What the book is about: In Taisho-era Japan, Tanjiro Kamado is a kindhearted boy who makes a living selling charcoal. But his peaceful life is shattered when a demon slaughters his entire family. His little sister Nezuko is the only survivor, but she has been transformed into a demon herself! Tanjiro sets out on a dangerous journey to find a way to return his sister to normal and destroy the demon who ruined his life.

“How’s Amanda” A Story of Truth, Lies and an American Addiction” (Washington Post) by Eli Saslow
Movie: Four Good Days
When it comes out: April 30
What the story is about: She had already made it through one last night alone under the freeway bridge, through the vomiting and shakes of withdrawal, through cravings so intense she’d scraped a bathroom floor searching for leftover traces of heroin. It had now been 12 days since the last time Amanda Wendler used a drug of any kind, her longest stretch in years. “Clear-eyed and sober,” read a report from one drug counselor, and so Amanda, 31, had moved back in with her mother to begin the stage of recovery she feared most.

Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse by Tom Clancy
Movie: Without Remorse
When it comes out: April 30
What the book is about: John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again. At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly.

Remember when going to the movies was a thing people did? Books to Film – March 2021

It has been a year since we’ve posted about upcoming movies that are based on books and, while many of us still won’t be rushing to theaters any time soon, now seems as good a time as any to start again.

So here it is. For those of you that always like to read the book before you see the movie (even if only to be able to say “the book was better”) the following is the list of book adaptations hitting big screens, phone screens and/or in-between screens next month.

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Movie: Moxie
When it comes out: March 3
What the book is about: Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
Movie: Chaos Walking
When it comes out: March 5
What the book is about: Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd’s gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
Movie: My Salinger Year
When it comes out: March 5
What the book is about: At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office, where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and old-time agents doze at their desks after martini lunches. At night she goes home to the tiny, threadbare Williamsburg apartment she shares with her socialist boyfriend. Precariously balanced between glamour and poverty, surrounded by titanic personalities, and struggling to trust her own artistic instinct, Rakoff is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. But as she reads the candid, heart-wrenching letters from his readers around the world, she finds herself unable to type out the agency’s decades-old form response. Instead, drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the template and begins writing back. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms.

The World to Come by Jim Shepard
Movie: The World to Come
When it comes out: March 5
What the book is about: A collection of ten stories, the titular tale and basis for the film being about two mid-nineteenth-century housewives trying to forge a connection despite their isolation on the frontier of settlement. In each story the personal is the political as these characters face everything from the emotional pitfalls of everyday life to historic catastrophes on a global scale.

Cherry by Nico Walker
Movie: Cherry
When it comes out: March 12
What the book is about: A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.

Dutch by Teri Woods
Movie: Dutch
When it comes out: March 12
What the book is about: District Attorney Anthony Jacobs is confident of the witnesses and associates he has gathered to testify and vows to bring to justice Bernard James, Jr.-Newark’s most notorious gangster. James, also known in the streets as “Dutch,” is noted to be the most dangerous criminal to come up in Jersey in the last 30 years. From his experience and skill as a young car thief, Dutch recognized the opportunity to become the ruler of the streets and seized it. Feared by all, and completely fearless, Dutch and his dangerous clique take over the lucrative heroine trade from the clutches of Nigerian drug lord Ojiugo Kazami. With both the respect and protection of the Italian Mafia, Dutch becomes the most terrifying force on the streets. Now he’s on trial for allegedly masterminding what the press has dubbed “The Month of Murder,” a brutal, thirty day, killing spree where none were spared. With Dutch facing multiple life sentences and a possibly death penalty, the streets are in a mixed uproar of celebration and dread. Will this be the end of Dutch’s reign of terror or just the beginning?

Yes Day! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Movie: Yes Day
When it comes out: March 12
What the book is about: No matter how silly the requests, there is one day a year when kids always receive positive answers: Can I have pizza for breakfast? Yes! Can we have a food fight? Yes! Can I stay up really late? Yes! This day is simply called Yes Day and it’s the best day of the year.

Books to Films: March 2020

Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison by Tim Jenkin

Movie: Escape from Pretoria
When it comes out: March 6
What the book is about: The thrilling story of Tim Jenkin’s daring escape from Pretoria Maximum Security Prison, where he was kept by apartheid authorities for his activities on behalf of the ANC, and his subsequent flight from South Africa.

The Retreat from Moscow by William Nicholson

Movie: Hope Gap
When it comes out: March 6
What the book is about: Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon’s costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman.

 

The Half Life by Jonathan Raymond

Movie: First Cow
When it comes out: March 6
What the book is about: When Cookie Figowitz, the cook for a party of volatile fur trappers trekking through the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, joins up with the refugee Henry Brown, the two begin a wild ride that takes them from the virgin territory of the West all the way to China and back again. One hundred and sixty years later, Tina Plank, an unhappy teenager, meets Trixie, a girl with a troubled past, and the two become fast friends. But when two skeletons are accidentally unearthed from their common ground, the lives of Tina and Trixie, Cookie and Henry are brought together in unexpected and startling ways.

Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland by Ace Atkins

Movie: Spenser Confidential
When it comes out: March 6
What the book is about: Henry Cimoli and Spenser have been friends for years, yet the old boxing trainer has never asked the private eye for a favor. Until now. A heavy-handed developer is trying to buy up Henry’s condo on Revere Beach and sends thugs to move the process along. Soon Spenser and his apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, find a trail leading to a mysterious and beautiful woman, a megalomaniacal Las Vegas kingpin, and plans to turn to a chunk of land north of Boston into a sprawling casino. Bitter rivals emerge, alliances turn, and the uglier pieces of the Boston political machine look to put an end to Spenser’s investigation. Aspiration, greed, and twisted dreams all focus on the old Wonderland dog track where the famous amusement park once fronted the ocean. For Spenser and Z, this simple favor to Henry will become the fight of their lives.

 

The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford

Movie: The Burnt Orange Heresy
When it comes out: March 6
What the book is about: Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing art critic Jacques Figueras will do anything – blackmail, burglary, fencing, assassination – to further his career. Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford expands his noir palette to include hues of sunny Florida and weird tints of Surrealism when Figueras takes a job for an art collector who doesn’t care how his art is collected, even if it involves murder.

 

Bloodshot by Duane Swierczynski (et al)

Movie: Bloodshot
When it comes out: March 13
What the book is about: Your name is Angelo Mortalli. Your brother is trapped behind enemy lines and on the verge of – no. That’s not right. Your name is Raymond Garrison. You’ve retired from the dangers of the field, but a desperate plea from your oldest friend plunges you into a vicious firefight that – no. That’s not right, either. You are Bloodshot. You are the shade of gray that freedom requires. The perfect confluence of military necessity and cutting-edge technology. A walking WikiLeaks. A reservoir of dirty secrets that could set the world on fire. And you’ve just been captured!

 

Tuscaloosa by W. Glasgow Phillips

Movie: Tuscaloosa
When it comes out: March 13
What the book is about: In a sensitive and sensual coming-of-age story, Phillips offers a poignant critique of the Southern novel genre, in which he questions the very foundations of his society–one that condemns women who take blacks or other women as lovers while rewarding the men who commit these women to mental institutions, abort their babies, and drive them to violent death.

 

Three Seconds by Roslund/Hellström

Movie: The Informer
When it comes out: March 13
What the book is about: Piet Hoffman, a top secret operative for the Swedish police, is about to embark on his most dangerous assignment yet: after years spent infiltrating the Polish mafia, he’s become a key player in their attempt to take over amphetamine distribution inside Sweden’s prisons. To stop them from succeeding, he will have to go deep cover, posing as a prisoner inside the country’s most notorious jail.

Books to Film: February 2020

Waiting for Anya by Michael Morpurgo

Movie: Waiting for Anya
When it comes out: February 7
What the book is about: Jo places his life in danger when he helps protect a growing number of Jewish children who have sought refuge at a reclusive widow’s farm.

 

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis

Movie: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
When it comes out: February 7
What the book is about: Take eleven-year-old Timmy Failure — the clueless, comically self-confident CEO of the best detective agency in town, perhaps even the nation. Add his impressively lazy business partner, a very large polar bear named Total. Throw in the Failuremobile — Timmy’s mom’s Segway — and what you have is Total Failure, Inc., a global enterprise destined to make Timmy so rich his mother won’t have to stress out about the bills anymore. Of course, Timmy’s plan does not include the four-foot-tall female whose name shall not be uttered. And it doesn’t include Rollo Tookus, who is so obsessed with getting into “Stanfurd” that he can’t carry out a no-brainer spy mission.

P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

Movie: To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You 
When it comes out: February 14
What the book is about: Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter. She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever. When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Movie: The Call of the Wild
When it comes out: February 21
What the book is about: First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London’s masterpiece. Based on London’s experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.

Emma by Jane Austen

Movie: Emma
When it comes out: February 21
What the book is about: Emma Woodhouse is one of Austen’s most captivating and vivid characters. Beautiful, spoilt, vain and irrepressibly witty, Emma organizes the lives of the inhabitants of her sleepy little village and plays matchmaker with devastating effect.

The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion

Movie: The Last Thing He Wanted
When it comes out: February 21
What the book is about: In that latter year Elena McMahon walks off the presidential campaign she has been covering for a major newspaper to do a favor for her father. Elena’s father does deals. And it is while acting as his agent in one such deal—a deal that shortly goes spectacularly wrong—that she finds herself on an island where tourism has been superseded by arms dealing, covert action, and assassination.

 

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Movie: All the Bright Places
When it comes out: February 28
What the book is about: When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.

Books to Read If You’re Watching Dickinson

Perfect reads for those who love a vintage story with a witty, modern twist.

Hailee Steinfeld in Dickinson (2019)

The Apple TV+ show Dickinson is the unexpected delight of Apple’s new streaming service. It is set in pre-Civil War Massachusetts and stars Hailee Steinfeld as a young Emily Dickinson chafing against the expectations of being a woman in the 1800s. It has a modern sense of humor (including the us-age of current slang and dialogue) and it’s witty, sharp, and entirely surprising.

If you have watched the first episode (or entire season) of this hidden gem and want to read some books in this vein, check out this list of books we’ve put together based on the themes of this entertaining show.

Go to Read It Forward to see the whole list.

Need some encouragement leading into the holidays?

21 QUOTES THAT PROVE THAT J.K. ROWLING IS AN A++ LIFE COACH

Life doesn’t come with coaches (unless we pay for one)! However, the godmother of magic is here to save the day. While reading Harry Potter for the first time I didn’t understand how it was stacked with important life advice through and through. So here is a list of J.K. Rowling quotes that have been my saving grace for the past few years.

Be inspired (and see the whole list) at BookRiot.

Books to Read If You Love The Crown on Netflix

If you adore the series, these books are the perfect companion for any royal fan.

Excited that Season 3 of The Crown is finally out on Netflix?

We’ll miss Claire Foy’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, but we’re so excited to watch Oscar-winner Olivia Colman step into the hallowed role. If you adore the Netflix series, these books are the perfect companion for any royal fan.

See the list on Read It Forward.

Books to Film: Holidays 2019 Edition

The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle

Movie: The Good Liar
When it comes out: November 15
What the book is about: Roy is a conman living in a small English town, about to pull off his final con. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman and slip away with her life savings. When Roy meets a wealthy widow online, he can hardly believe his luck. Just like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, Roy is a man who lives to deceive—and everything about Betty suggests she’s an easy mark. He’s confident that his scheme to swindle her will be a success. After all, he’s done this before. But who is Roy, really? Spanning almost a century, this stunning and suspenseful feat of storytelling interweaves the present with the past. As the clock turns back and the years fall away, long-hidden secrets are forced into the light. Some things can never be forgotten. Or forgiven.

 

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Movie: All Rise
When it comes out: November 15
What the book is about: Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. A Harlem drugstore owner was shot and killed in his store, and the word is that Steve served as the lookout. Guilty or innocent, Steve becomes a pawn in the hands of “the system,” cluttered with cynical authority figures and unscrupulous inmates, who will turn in anyone to shorten their own sentences. For the first time, Steve is forced to think about who he is as he faces prison, where he may spend all the tomorrows of his life.

 

I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt

Movie: The Irishman
When it comes out: November 15
What the book is about: The first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran were, “I heard you paint houses.” To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, he did the deed, knowing that if he had refused he would have been killed himself.

 

Earthquake Bird by Susanna Jones

Movie: Earthquake Bird 
When it comes out: November 15
What the book is about: Lucy Fly — an English expat who translates “tedious” technical manuals — has agreed to help a new arrival, Lily Bridges, navigate her first confusing weeks in Japan. Like Lucy, Lily has also fled an unhappy life in Yorkshire, but as Lily insinuates herself into Lucy’s life, Lucy finds that she has gained a friend but lost her sometime lover, Teiji. When Lily disappears and her body is found dismembered in Tokyo Bay, Lucy becomes the chief suspect and the focus of an intense police interrogation, through which she narrates her life story. From her unwelcome birth through her painful Yorkshire childhood, Lucy illuminates her growing fascination with music and language, both of which helped provide her means of escape. But Lucy now must struggle to prove her innocence in the murder of Lily. Alas, the first person she must convince is herself.

 

Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant

Movie: I Lost My Body
When it comes out: November 15
What the book is about: Naoufel, nicknamed “Nafnaf,” is a dunce and a scapegoat who lost his parents very early. Taken in by his Uncle Samir, he is in love with his cousin Sheherazade and believes anything she tells him. Later, he lives in a maid’s room rented to him by carpenter Philippard and becomes his apprentice. After he cuts off his hand during a horrible accident with a circular saw his hand will experience many adventures attempting to find its way back to Nafnaf.

 

“Can You Say… Hero?” in Esquire by Tom Junod

Movie: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
When it comes out: November 22
What the book is about: Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. His name was Fred Rogers. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children’s Corner. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next…until he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years.

 

“The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” in The New York Times Magazine by Nathaniel Rich

Movie: Dark Waters
When it comes out: November 22
What the book is about: Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.

 

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Movie: A Million Little Pieces
When it comes out: December 6
What the book is about: Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, this is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice.

 

In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw

Movie: Daniel Isn’t Real
When it comes out: December 6
What the book is about: On a chilly November afternoon, six-year-old Luke Nightingale’s life changes forever. On the playground across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he encounters Daniel. Within hours, Luke and his mother, Claire, are welcoming Daniel into their Upper East Side apartment — and their lives. Daniel and Luke are soon inseparable. With his parents divorcing, Luke takes comfort in having a near-constant playmate. But there’s something strange about Daniel, who is more than happy to bind himself to the Nightingales. As Luke grows from a child to an adolescent to a young man, he realizes that as much as his mother needs him, Daniel needs him more. Jealous of Luke’s other attachments, Daniel moves from gestures of friendship into increasingly sinister manipulations. In the end, Luke finds himself in a daily battle for control of his own life.

 

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot

Movie: Cats
When it comes out: December 20
What the book is about: A collection of whimsical light poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology. It is the basis for the musical Cats. Eliot wrote the poems in the 1930s, and included them, under his assumed name “Old Possum”, in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939, with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley.

 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Movie: Little Women
When it comes out: December 25
What the book is about: Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

 

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Movie: Just Mercy
When it comes out: December 25
What the book is about: Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

 

The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht

Movie: The Song of Names
When it comes out: December 25
What the book is about: Martin Simmonds’ father tells him, “Never trust a musician when he speaks about love.” The advice comes too late. Martin already loves Dovidl Rapoport, an eerily gifted Polish violin prodigy whose parents left him in the Simmonds’s care before they perished in the Holocaust. For a time the two boys are closer than brothers. But on the day he is to make his official debut, Dovidl disappears. Only 40 years later does Martin get his first clue about what happened to him.

 

Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellström

Movie: The Informer
When it comes out: January 10
What the book is about: Piet Hoffman, a top secret operative for the Swedish police, is about to embark on his most dangerous assignment yet: after years spent infiltrating the Polish mafia, he’s become a key player in their attempt to take over amphetamine distribution inside Sweden’s prisons. To stop them from succeeding, he will have to go deep cover, posing as a prisoner inside the country’s most notorious jail.

Thursday Ditto!

Are you a fan of chaotic and suspenseful films about military history? This one is for you.