Books to Film – October 2021

There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
Movie: There’s Someone Inside Your House
Release Date: October 6
What the book is about: Makani Young thought she’d left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She’s found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn’t far behind. Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Movie: Fever Dream
Release Date: October 13
What the book is about: A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

The Last Duel by Eric Jager
Movie: The Last Duel
Release Date: October 15
What the book is about: The gripping true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France as a resolute knight defends his wife’s honor against the squire she accuses of a heinous crime. In the midst of the devastating Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight fresh from combat in Scotland, returns home to yet another deadly threat. His wife, Marguerite, has accused squire Jacques Le Gris of rape. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” between the two men that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris. What follows is a fierce duel, the final one sanctioned by governing powers, before a massive crowd that includes the teenage King Charles VI, during which both combatants are wounded—but only one fatally.

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan
Movie: I Know What You Did Last Summer
Release Date: October 15
What the book is about: Last summer, four terrified friends made a desperate pact to conceal a shocking secret. But now, someone has learned the truth and is determined to get even. The horror is starting again. There is an unknown avenger out there who is stalking them in a deadly game. Will he stop at terror-or is he out for revenge?

Dune by Frank Herbert
Movie: Dune
Release Date: October 22
What the book is about: Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for… When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

Passing by Nella Larsen
Movie: Passing
Release Date: October 27
What the book is about: Irene Redfield, the novel’s protagonist, is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Her work arranging charity balls that gather Harlem’s elite creates a sense of purpose and respectability for Irene. But her hold on this world begins to slip the day she encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend with whom she had lost touch. Clare—light-skinned, beautiful, and charming—tells Irene how, after her father’s death, she left behind the black neighborhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband. As Clare begins inserting herself into Irene’s life, Irene is thrown into a panic, terrified of the consequences of Clare’s dangerous behavior. And when Clare witnesses the vibrancy and energy of the community she left behind, her burning desire to come back threatens to shatter her careful deception.

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.