19 books to read this summer before they hit your screens

Times

3 days ago

Anyone who was forced to read the whole Harry Potter series before they were allowed to watch the films with their friends might roll their eyes, but knowing a book before sitting down with the film or television version is hard to beat. There's the chance to build an imaginative world of your own — and then see how the screen version shapes up, what it includes and, equally vital, what gets left out. Here, then are some of the key releases to swot up on this summer.
Interested in 1066 and all that? Head for this drama starring the uncannily Bayeux Tapestry-faced James Norton as Harold Godwinson and the Games of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William. Strictly speaking this is not a literary adaptation, but you can prepare by reading Marc Morris's zippy chronicle The Norman Conquest or William the Conqueror by David Bates, a biography as weighty as its corpulent subject. Meanwhile, readers who prefer fiction — Norman People, maybe — can try Julian Rathbone's superior historical novel The Last English King.
So ubiquitous was Richard Osman's 2020 cosy crime novel that a recommendation to read it is probably only useful to three UK residents. Still, catch up on the intriguing happenings at Cooper's Chase retirement village before Chris Columbus's film and its high-end cast — Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan — fix the image of the charming but poignant crime-fighting pensioners in stone.
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'Team Laura or Team Cherry?' could be this autumn's water-cooler question thanks to this six-part adaptation of Michelle Frances's gripping debut novel from 2018. 'The most marvellous psychological thriller,' according to Jilly Cooper, The Girlfriend hinges on Laura, whose luxurious life starts to unravel after her well-meaning 23-year-old son, Daniel, takes up with a smart, ambitious new partner. Robin Wright stars and directs; Laurie Davidson and Olivia Cooke complete the Mumsnet-worthy mother–son–daughter-in-law triangle.
'A place of yellows and greys,' is how Mick Herron describes the MI5 outpost Slough House, an epically dingy milieu superbly recreated across four Apple TV+ seasons. Book five in the series, London Rules, arrives on screen soon and, while Gary Oldman's portrayal of the disreputable agent Jackson Lamb is as indelible as the stains on his mac, viewers should do themselves a favour by hitting the source material. Start with the knife-edge first book Slow Horses to see the kebab-shop le Carré build his world of espionage from the ground up. And if you've watched the series already, don't be put off the books — they bring another dimension to the Slough House renegades.
Paul Thomas Anderson has form with Thomas Pynchon: in 2014 the director orchestrated the first film of the elusive author's work with an adaptation of the 2009 psychedelic gumshoe ramble Inherent Vice. Headed by Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another is loosely based on Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, a timely trip through a divided America.
Stephen King has long been a gift to book-lovers — how many new readers have been forged between the pages of It, Carrie or Salem's Lot? But he's also become such an essential creative wellspring for film-makers that the industry would shrivel without him. After The Life of Chuck with Tom Hiddleston (cinemas, Aug 22), two of his dystopian stories finding their natural place in 2025. The Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright has remodelled The Running Man, originally filmed with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987, while Francis Lawrence's take on the 1979 novel The Long Walk (like The Running Man, published under King's Richard Bachman alias) is Squid Game x Speed.
This is a name-changed take on Max Porter's 2023 novella Shy, the story of a troubled young offender sent to a special boarding school ominously called Last Chance. While the excellent cast — Simbi 'Little Simz' Ajikawo, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman and, as the headteacher Steve, Cillian Murphy — are likely to be up to the storytelling task, Porter's lyrically tangled, psychologically astute writing demands to be read on the page.
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The last novel by the young adult/romance writer Colleen Hoover to be made into a film was It Ends with Us, a production that incubated the legal feud between Blake Lively and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni. Here's hoping this adaptation of Hoover's 2019 novel ran smoother, with Allison Williams (Get Out, Girls) and Mckenna Grace portraying a complicated mother-daughter relationship. Fans of Gilmore Girls-style family intrigue will regret nothing.
Robert Grainier — an itinerant labourer and the protagonist of Denis Johnson's time-skipping Great American novella — returns home one day in 1920 to discover his wife and child have vanished after a fire 'stronger than God' rips through their Idaho valley. Catching the book's signs, wonders and spectacular landscapes, Clint Bentley's film adaptation casts Joel Edgerton, William H Macy and Felicity Jones in Johnson's profound meditation on the shape and meaning of a life.
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel has long galvanised film-makers, the idea of a bolt-necked monster now a pop-culture staple. Read the original to experience the violent gothic sweep of the 18-year-old author's imagination — and to earn the right to reprimand anyone calling the creature 'Frankenstein'. The Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro has been promising his version of the man-v-God meltdown for nearly 20 years; this autumn, it will jolt off the slab, with Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creation.
Set in 1975 on the outskirts of Belfast, Louise Kennedy's slow-burning but highly acclaimed 2022 debut novel tells the story of Cushla Lavery, a 24-year-old Catholic primary school teacher and part-time barmaid who starts an affair with a married Protestant lawyer. Lola Petticrew will play Cushla and Tom Cullen her dangerous love interest Michael, but the starriest presence is Gillian Anderson, who will take on the role of Cushla's chaotic alcoholic mother, Gina.
The dank second novel by Nick Cave is no beach read, but if you're spending the holidays in an upsettingly grimy motel room somewhere in southern England, it could be a perfect match. Digest its strong meat — think David Peace writing for Robin Askwith — then watch the six-part adaptation starring Matt Smith as a sex-obsessed cosmetics salesman who takes his son on an ungodly Fiat Punto road trip. Lindsay Duncan, Robert Glenister and David Threlfall join Cave's grotesque odyssey.
A sequel to the BBC's 2016 version of John le Carré's 1993 novel has long been in the ether, with the writer open to an all-new storyline before his death in 2020. Season two is now imminent, featuring a reprise of Tom Hiddleston's star-making turn as Jonathan Pine. Refamiliarise yourself with the novel's tangled geopolitical web, or descend into le Carré's classic Cold War labyrinth with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the source of the BBC's immaculate 1979 adaptation with Alec Guinness.
William Golding's pre-pubescent Apocalypse Now thrums with postwar visions of evil. When a band of boys are stranded on a tropical island, Piggy and Ralph attempt to establish an egalitarian society, but brutal Jack has different ideas. Peter Brook's ominous 1963 adaptation was brilliantly pastiched in The Simpsons episode Das Bus; this version, scored by Hans Zimmer and scripted by the TV powerhouse Jack Thorne (Adolescence), will introduce a new generation to the power of the conch.
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The pseudonymous physician Freida McFadden has become a thriller-writing sensation since self-publishing her debut in 2013. The Housemaid was the brain specialist's breakthrough, though; lurid psychological catnip for Gone Girl fans. The story of a former convict turned maid and her dysfunctional employers, it was made for a sun lounger and a tall drink, so get ahead of the twists before Paul Feig's adaptation — starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney — hits cinemas on Boxing Day.
John Steinbeck's biblically inclined 1952 family saga relocates the story of Cain and Abel to First World War-era California. James Dean's brooding portrayal of Cal Trask in Elia Kazan's potently distilled 1955 film was generation-defining for the sensitive young men of its time. This reimagining, written and produced by Kazan's granddaughter Zoe Kazan, will re-spin the tale by focusing on Cal's absentee mother, Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh).
If you missed the rite of passage that was passing Jilly Cooper's Rivals around a form room — the dog-eared copy suspiciously falling open at certain erotic pages — there's no better use of a summer holiday than initiating yourself into Rutshire mores. Series one of Disney+'s excellent adaptation managed to navigate the less 2025-friendly aspects of the book without losing the sexy, silly thrust of the whole enterprise. Armour yourself in stilettos and hairspray ready for series two.
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Despite being announced in 2022, the BBC's adaptation of Douglas Stuart's 2020 debut still appears to be in limbo. There's still time, then, to read the Booker-winning novel if you haven't already: no matter when the show emerges, Stuart's harrowing tale of the Glaswegian teenager Shuggie Bain, his alcoholic mother, Agnes, and their lives in the cab ranks and council flats of the 1980s 'real Glasgow' will not quickly leave your memory.
As her husband and fellow academic faces charges of sexual misconduct, the nameless protagonist of Julia May Jonas's sharply modern 2022 campus novel becomes obsessed with a new professor 15 years her junior. Sex, power, female appetite, 'morality in art': the twists in the book's Nabokovian ethical maze are elegantly signposted by Jonas. Executive produced by Sharon Horgan, it will star Rachel Weisz, with 28-year-old Leo Woodall as the title character.
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