10 Books You Should Read Before They Become Movies in 2021
If you prefer to read a book before seeing the movie adaptation, here are ten bestselling books to bump to the top of your reading list.
And as always, use BIGWORDS.com price comparison site to find the cheapest priced copies of these books!
The Dig by John Preston
Movie: The Dig
Release Date: January 15, 2021 on Netflix
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes
A literary adventure that tells the story of a priceless buried treasure discovered in England on the eve of World War II
In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find.
This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind.
Source: Publisher
Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han
Movie: Always and Forever, Lara Jean
Release Date: TBA, but will premiere on Netflix
Starring: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, John Corbett
Lara Jean’s letter-writing days aren’t over in this follow-up to the bestselling To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You. Soon to be a major motion picture coming to Netflix in 2021—the first two movies in the series are streaming now!
Lara Jean is having the best senior year a girl could ever hope for. She is head over heels in love with her boyfriend, Peter; her dad’s finally getting remarried to their next door neighbor, Ms. Rothschild; and Margot’s coming home for the summer just in time for the wedding.
But change is looming on the horizon. And while Lara Jean is having fun and keeping busy helping plan her father’s wedding, she can’t ignore the big life decisions she has to make. Most pressingly, where she wants to go to college and what that means for her relationship with Peter. She watched her sister Margot go through these growing pains. Now Lara Jean’s the one who’ll be graduating high school and leaving for college and leaving her family—and possibly the boy she loves—behind.
When your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to?
Source: Publisher
French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
Movie: French Exit
Release Date: February 12, 2021
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges
From bestselling author Patrick deWitt, a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.
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 Price’s 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.
Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin – to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.
Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind ‘tragedy of manners,’ a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.
Source: Publisher
Without Remorse by Tom Clancy
Movie: Without Remorse
Release Date: February 26, 2021 on Prime Video
Starring: Jamie Bell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Michael B. Jordan
Over the course of seven novels, Tom Clancy’s “genius for big, compelling plots” and his “natural narrative gift” (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized tens of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Without Remorse, however, goes beyond anything he has ever done. Its hero is John Kelly, a man well familiar to Clancy’s readers by his code name, Mr. Clark. In The Sum of All Fears, he hunted down nuclear terrorists. In Clear and Present Danger, he led aerial raids against drug lords. In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, he spirited away a KGB chief’s family by submarine. But nothing will ever be as deadly – or as personal – as the danger he must face in Without Remorse. 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. Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad – men so skillful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, restson his making sure that misstep never happens. Men aren’t born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect… As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Without Remorse, he blends the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, knife-edge suspense and a remarkable cast of characters.
Source: Publisher
Marry Me by Bobby Crosby (Graphic Novel)
Movie: Marry Me
Release Date: May 14, 2021
Starring: Jennifer Lopez and Maluma, Owen Wilson, and Sarah Silverman
A world-famous pop star, frustrated with her love life, marries a random fan holding a MARRY ME sign at one of her concerts.
Source: Publisher
Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness
Movie: The Knife of Never Letting Go
Release Date: TBA
Starring: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Nick Jonas, Mads Mikkelsen
Imagine you can hear everything the town of men say about you. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don’t fit into their plans. Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run.
The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness. It was published by Walker Books on 5 May 2008. It is the first book in the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men.
Source: Publisher
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Movie: The Nightingale
Release Date: December 22, 2021
Starring: Elle and Dakota Fanning
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France … but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can … completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real — and deadly — consequences. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France.
Source: Publisher
The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz
Movie: Infinite
Release Date: May 28, 2021
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Dylan O’Brien
Discovered as three notebooks in an antique store in Rome at the turn of the millennium, The Reincarnationist Papers offers a tantalizing glimpse into the Cognomina, a secret society of people who possess total recall of their past lives.
Evan Michaels struggles with being different, with having the complete memories of two other people who lived sequentially before him. He fights loneliness and believes he is unique until he meets Poppy. She recognizes his struggle because she is like him, except that she is much older, remembering seven consecutive lives. But there is something else she must share with Evan—she is a member of the secretive Cognomina. They are, in effect, immortals—compiling experiences and skills over lifetimes into near superhuman abilities that they have used to drive history over centuries.
Poppy invites Evan into the Cognomina, but he must face their tests before entering this mysterious society as their equal.
Source: Publisher
Movie: Dune
Release Date: 1 October 2021
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, Rebecca Ferguson, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgärd, Zendaya
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.
A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
Source: Publisher
Movie: Cherry
Release Date: 26 February 2021
Release Date: February 26, 2021 in theaters, and March 12, 2021
Starring: Tom Holland, Forrest Goodluck, and Bill Skarsgård
Jesus’ Son meets Reservoir Dogs in a breakneck-paced debut novel about love, war, bank robberies, and heroin.
Cleveland, 2003. 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.
Hammered out on a typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.
Source: Publisher